"Thaaaaaat's politics!"

The crash of Cter's chair that she flung behind her as she stood up with a terrified gasp having challenged what Frioke said with a disbelieving look. As an encroaching cold snuffs out the last sparks of a magically lit fire, the realization sank deeper and deeper into Cter's bones until it finally encompassed her entire soul. Her eyes strained on the old book that Frioke had brought new from the bookcase and turned old with her magic. "No..." the Monster Mage whispered with her mouth clenched close and her eyelids wanting to close as well to hide her from what had been unveiled. "No, it can't be so!"

A flinch and a groan was coughed out of Frioke as Cter slammed her left arm into her right hand to grab a hold of her sleeve. It couldn't be true! Otherwise human magic wouldn't work at all! She wouldn't have a sleeve to begin with! There wouldn't be any human magic without the Cooperative Connection!

Was...was is just a test? To see how Cter would react?

Yes, yes! It had to be that!

Cter's lips bent into an uncomfortable grin that tugged at her cheeks hard. Her teeth exposed their white glister in a maniacal way, further made raving by the soft light of Frioke's candlelight. "Y-You're testing m-me," she stammered after a difficult swallow. "J-Just t-to see how I w-would r-react to this! T-This..." She threw her left hand at the book as her stammer overtook her. Even as she said it she knew it wasn't true. She knew!

But how could she accept it?

"Yes, this is to see how you react, Cter," said Frioke carefully. With an even more careful motion of her hand surrounded by purple magic she lifted up the chair Cter had knocked over and motioned for the Monster Mage to sit down again. "Please," she encouraged.

Worried glances bounced between the chair and Frioke from Cter. "It can't be true." It was a plea. "It's..." A plea that she hadn't heard it. "How?" A plea that somebody else would've heard instead! "Why?"

Frioke waited patiently and with nothing more said for Cter to sit down so that she could continue. Eventually Cter's legs became too weak to stand on and she was forced to first rest her sleeved hand on the chair's backrest, and then guide herself down to sit. With disgust she recoiled away from the book in front of her on the wooden table, and pushed it enough to the side for it to be outside her field of vision across thick and deep crevices in the old wood.

"Would you like some water, Cter?"

Yes.

"Something to eat?"

No.

"Alright."

From the other side of the room Frioke brought a metal jug of water and two mugs which she poured via her magic. "Forgive my earlier vocal fry and sudden burst of levity in my answer." She then handed the mug over physically to Cter who took it in her right hand after some thinking. Her left hand had become to feel uncomfortable to her. "I found it to work on Sund, so I assumed since you are a generation after him you'd find the tonal shift enough to...not exactly deny your reaction, but shift its context a bit." Her ears bowed with her head. "Allow me to explain again, please."

Cter didn't drink any of her given water despite feeling very parched and having a headache forming. Frioke took the silence as a go-ahead since Cter's latest denial was quite loud.

"While it is true that the Cooperative Connection does exist as one way for human magic to be expressed through a monster catalyst, it is not exclusive when it comes to expressing human magic, in the sense that it is not exclusively a positive and cooperative bond that is needed. In fact, there really isn't any differences between the emotions. Violent ones bond just as well as friendly ones." The book slid back from its pushed-away position and opened up to its introductory page via Frioke's magic.

Cter noticed that the purple to the Royal Councilor's magic had a different hue to it as it enveloped the book. Like...it was a color that coincidentally looked the same as purple, but wasn't at all related to purple. Just as she began to observe it though Frioke let the opened cover of the book fall and tap still on the table.

"The reason only the Cooperative Connection works is because that is what stops human magic from becoming a reason for war." The bitterness of Frioke's words caused her ears to shiver. She was forced to wash her mouth with water before she could continue, and even then she smacked her tongue to get the last of the bitter off. "Not just between the human countries, but between humans and monsters too."

But wasn't…

"The reason I say it in that order is because war between the humans nations will be horrible for us monsters, but war between humans and monsters would be catastrophic," Frioke added seeing the slightly confused expression birthing on Cter's fair-skinned face. "And to continue on you need to understand why that is the case. You already know it, but as a Monster Mage you also have to understand it. That is the first and foremost reason why you are now considered a monster, Cter. Why you are no longer human in all senses except your own five physical ones."

A long and silent pause hung above the two akin to the magical light which illuminated both Frioke's neutral demeanor hiding something much darker to share with Cter, as well as Cter's sinking of her shoulders in a cower as she knew that she had to brace against what she was about to hear, but exactly how was just guesswork.

"We will have to go a long ways back, but as I said before we will have to begin in the now with what you already know. So please, even if it will hurt you to speak what you now know to be false, explain to me what you know about the Cooperative Connection. In your own words."

In her own words…

No, no she couldn't. It would hurt too much. The only way she could was to try and paraphrase what Professor Laurell had taught years ago at Soul's School. "The Cooperative Connection is the concept of building a relationship between a monster and a human so that the memories of the human is powerful and potent enough to linger even outside of the monster's gifted presence to the human. This is then used by the human as a catalyst for their soul to express magic through the monster's memories. The Cooperative Connection can only be built via positive and constructive memories…"

Cter's tongue refused to continue. With what Frioke had said she couldn't in good faith say anything more. Strangely enough she didn't feel any animosity towards Professor Laurell. The way she remembered his lectures there wasn't a sliver of lies sprinkled in his material. He was always so open and willing to extend his aura so that all the humans would have it easier to feel it and to learn.

He didn't know.

"Professor Laurell taught you well," Frioke said with a hint of sadness to her voice. "I recall the day we sent him to help build up Soul's School with an immense amount of both pride and shame. He was a close friend of mine, but our ranks differed like a chasm so I was forced to deny his wishes of becoming closer and following him to become headmaster of Soul's School." The hint grew to a full-on solution which reverberated inside Frioke's candlelight. The bookshelves surrounding the walls seemed to creep closer in the fading light until Frioke managed to compose herself with a heavy exhale. "Four times I've told that and still it pains me like nothing else." She turned her head to the side towards one of the shorter walls. Cter followed the look and noticed due to the shift in the light that there was a rounded crevice poking out behind one of the bookcases.

A window.

A window facing Hjearta, most likely.

"There is a reason for the rapid pace of human magic," continued Frioke after a few long pairs of breaths. "And there is a reason for why monsters have been so open to the idea, even as to be the forerunners of the field." She looked deep into Cter's eyes with utmost concern. "And it is all to protect the monsters from the humans."

Cter couldn't help but take that to heart. She had only been a monster for a couple of days, so Frioke understood it, but the air between the two soured for a few seconds before Cter managed to let it sink in comfortably. The sourness blended badly with the miasma of ink and paper of various make and ages to the point that Cter wanted to ask Frioke to open the window with her magic to have some of the air let inside. Since the two were on the lowest floor just a door or two away from the castle garden words would've escaped the room though to reach others. Cter had seen and felt how the Royal Guards actually worked so if words got out they would travel beyond Monster Country into both Xoff and Hjearta.

She'd have to weather the smell.

And hope that it wouldn't get worse.

She was thankful that she still had some hope left to push against what she knew.

"It is an open secret to everyone, be it monster or human, that if a human country, maybe even a human city, or village, decided to attack Monster Country there would not be war, there would only be slaughter. Roads paved with dust for each cobblestone dotted with blood, if there even would be any dots. Even when you knew about that as a human you never would've even begun thinking of the actual act, am I right, Cter?"

Frioke was indeed correct on that assumption which she shot over the table with a gentle tilt of her head and ears along with her brow slightly raised. Not to signal that she knew in a mocking way, but to show that the two were on the same page. "Would never have struck my mind through my own volition," she answered before shaking her head. "Never in a thousand years."

"Because monsters are useful to humans." Frioke stated her fact with a necessary distance to it which she still had to wait on to become even more distant to her. "Useful not only as family and friends, but now also as a means to progress as a society. Diplomacy has been the only reason monsters have not been wiped out as a society. Some lucky breaks when it came to picking sides, but for the most part the only contingency us monsters have had against humans have been diplomacy. Long before we had cities or villages we barely knew of the other race's existence, and even further back than that we can only speculate."

"Some have said that we were one before," Cter chimed in. It was Romrom's words she spoke. Some of her dormant magic still lingered within Cter, she wanted to believe. The two were close as family, and Cter had grown so much with Romrom's sleeve that it was inevitable that some would slip through, right? Like a married couple taking on the significant other's habits and demeanor? "Could it be that we could come back to that in the future?"

"It is a legend that humans and monsters were once as difficult to separate as Gerson from the stick up his shell he has during festivities, true," Frioke agreed with a flick of her index claw over to a bookshelf at the opposite side of the window. "We have some books about that, but pulling them out to read would have them disintegrate. Depending of course how far the increased magical affinity the upcoming human genertations have for magic that might as well become a reality that will close in on the horizon." She returned her hand to her lap. "However, that is a discussion we'll have after this one, please?"

"Yes. Sorry for interrupting."

The hand didn't get much respite before it was called into action again. With a reassuring smile Frioke lifted her palm up and nodded. "Don't apologize for curiosity, Monster Mage. You are asking questions which only Kry managed to when he was first told about this. Kurant and Sund were not as curious as you were. I have not pressed them for the exact reason as they have managed their roles as Monster Mages well since after their first lesson." The palm was laid gently onto Cter's sleeved hand. Despite the visible roughness of Frioke's scales they were still soft to the touch. So gentle was she. "You are doing well, Cter."

It meant a lot to hear that.

"Now," Frioke returned her hand to her lap for a second time, "as humans and monsters began to meet there was initial conflict, but it ended with the realization of magic as a tool to help crops. Like you've been taught it was the first Cooperative Connection the two races made. From then more and more trading of skill helped the lands to be tended and cities to form. Economy and society grew until eventually there were more that remembered seeing the other race regularly than vice versa." Frioke's other hand emerged from her lap to flip to the first page of the book. "Enter into this world Prince Soulay of Hjearta."

On the first page was a portray of the famous human royal in his youth sitting in the lap of Queen Toriel. The paper in the book looked its age, but Queen Toriel certainly didn't. She looked exactly the same on the portray as she did when Cter met her just a day or so before. Queen Toriel had only been a queen for a decade or so before she met Prince Soulay.

"Queen Toriel was in her eleventh year of her and King Asgore's joint reign when she met Prince Soulay for the first time." A brief and nostalgic smile touched Frioke's lips which caused her to lean over the book to get a better angle. "He was the second human I had heard of having an affinity for magic. My second pupil. The first one I had was from Soulay's lineage. His mother was thought to be able to possess magic when a monster servant sensed the vague resemblance of an aura inside her when she was a princess. It took until one generation later and Queen Toriel weaving her memories into the blind prince's gift for his soul to be the first one to create a noticeable aura."

The Blind Prince that saw through magic.

So well he saw with his aura that there existed no portray of him with his eyes closed anywhere in Soul's School. The only one Cter ever saw was in the book she read on her first lesson in Jarasevo Castle. Prince Soulay's eyes were closed as if sleeping, but his smile that mirrored Queen Toriel's perfectly made him fully awake.

In a way she was the opposite of The Blind Prince, wasn't she? He was blind, but he knew he could see. She could see, and didn't know that she had been blind. Her eyes had been opened seeing the prince's eyes closed.

The page was turned again by Frioke. "You know the rest of the story, which is all true. Queen Toriel did indeed sew her memories into the gift she gave to Prince Soulay. The caravan which had brought him home came right back to tell of his aura." With another glance out the covered window she hummed to herself. "It must've been instantly for how short a time it returned to inform the Monster Royals about the development. Even as I opened the magical seal from the monster servant's magic I could feel that there was something in Fenkeep Castle that I had to get to. I set off with Sir Gerson that very evening. At the border to Hjearta we were met by the personal guard of the Hjearta royals to escort us and keep up pace."

Cter caught a snicker exposing Frioke's fangs which she quickly quelled behind her balled fist and a few coughs into it. "Forgive me for drifting off into my memories, but seeing Sir Gerson ride a horse faster than the Hjearta guards that were supposed to escort us was something truly wonderful. The entire journey had such joyous energy to it. Such excitement from both us two monsters and the small regiment of humans. It was as if everyone already knew, and only waited for me to confirm."

She inhaled deeply.

"Hjearta during autumn truly is a beautiful sight to behold."

"I know," Cter agreeed. "Was it your first time seeing the shifting colors of the leaves?"

The candlelight blossomed into the same deep orange as the leaves of Hjearta's trees experienced in late autumn. Cter could almost narrow the date of the trip down to a particular week, the color was so vivid. "Yes, it was. Sir Gerson had seen it many times before, but I could tell that even when he exhausted his horse he let a small piece of himself enjoy the scenery as it swept us by like hurried strokes of a painter's brush."

A leaf of magic Cter formed in her hand. One that she knew grew in abundance in the province Hjearta Castle was located. "Was it this?" she asked while slowly twirling the gently glowing stem between her fingers. "I have some very vivid memories of playing around in big piles of these during fall...autumn. They make good tinder for starting big pyres which my village eat plenty around during harvest. We collectively buy the biggest piece of pork from the butcher, then the biggest piece of bread from the baker, and then the biggest piece of cheese the cheesemonger had. There was this one year though when the cheese shop was licensed for dancing under a new Jester owner and there was no cheese to buy at all. As he also took over the cattle to produce the milk for his various dairy he didn't predict that his horns made the cows see him as the strongest bull which halted calves from being born for one season until he eventually gave up and dulled them down."

Cter's eagerness to share her village story was quickly drowned underneath the bubbling longing which took her over quickly. "I...miss it."

"I'm sure you do, Cter." Frioke spoke like an old friend to Cter. It was a subject they both shared deeply. So much so that the Royal Councilor's eyes couldn't let go from the leaf in Cter's hand. She noticed, and did so with a knowing nod. While caressing the stem she changed the leaf's color first to a spring-green.

"The buds spring into this which then deepen as it become late spring and early summer." As she explained the leaf changed color. "During the summer they mostly stay the same, but it depends on where the trees grow. Closer up north they fade earlier than what they do more south, more closer to Monster Country." A subtle gradient from the stem grew up to the top of the leaf. "Then during autumn they go through their other colors." From green to yellow to orange to red. "Eventually you do get used to it."

"Ain't that a pity," Frioke chuckled.

"It is," Cter agreed with an identical chuckle. "It makes it a bit difficult talking about it with the same enthusiasm as someone who isn't used to it though. Kinda like magic, now that I think about it."

"You have a good point there. You've learned to appreciate magic both as a human and as a monster, so you've felt both sides of that." There was a curious pause that Frioke invoked while leaning back with her arms crossed over her chest. "Both sides..." She repeated to herself as her eyes blinked in heavy thought. With a contemplative look Frioke inspected her palm before rubbing it with her thumb. There was a rough sound to it. "How willing are you to want to experience that other side, Cter? With your reason to becoming a Monster Mage there is a much-more effective way for you to learn what transcribed and why we had to lie."

Frioke only had to shift her eyes over to meet Cter's eyes for her to know what she was suggesting.

It had Cter's chair again crashing onto the floor.

"No!" she shouted defiantly. "No! Never again! That's too far!"

"It won't be like with Idyll."

It won't…

No…

Was this the plan all along? For Cter to…

She heaved as her entire being rejected the idea. Screamed against it from the depths of her soul throughout her body. Through her bones, veins, muscle, skin, everything! She felt faint, and stumbled down onto the table onto her stiffened arms that still shook. Drops of cold sweat formed wherever they could.

"I won't."

"It will be different."

"I don't care!"

"You've already experienced magic through a non-Cooperative Connection, Cter."

Yes, that she knew.

With Idyll…

Not with the green monster. That wasn't close enough.

"It requires something more deeper than the Cooperative Connection for that type of magic to form, doesn't it? Something more...sinister for it to be a non-Cooperative Connection?"

"That is why we have been able to keep it a secret. The Cooperative Connection is what can be taught. Something that can be schooled. We were lucky in figuring out a balance to it that sounded negative. How it was based on the human and monster perspectives of death. That was a lucky break to us. It was something we could leverage to discourage any thoughts otherwise about the Cooperative Connection being the only way. If we have to rely on death to create it then it had to be the only way."

"So it wasn't a lie?" Cter retorted with a growl that she wasn't able to loosen up before she spoke.

Despite being much shorter than Cter, when Frioke stood up she felt as intimidating as the height of King Asgore. It wasn't through her magic in Cter's sleeve either. It was purely her physical presence. "You have to accept that what you did with Idyll was something good, Cter. Not only for her and you, but for the future of both monsters and humans."

She switched the order.

"You have to help us to figure out this next step in human magic if we are to keep the world at peace. With your help we can stop ourselves from walking too far than we should." The Royal Councilor offered her hand to the newly employed Monster Mage. "This is your first assignment as a Monster Mage. The first time you take the weight upon your shoulders for the good of everyone. You will be one of the most powerful mages after this, because this is not something a monster can do."

And she called Cter a human!

"This is only something a human can do for the monsters."

With a heavy hand Cter gripped her sleeve.

"I won't give as much as Idyll did, Cter. Just enough to have you lose yourself in my memories. It won't take as much as it did with Idyll. You've learned. Your soul have learned. This is your magic, and you have to learn more of it."

Her magic...

"I'll be here watching over you the entire time."

Cter's magic.

Her own magic. All of the sharing she did with the other monsters, of course it made sense for hers to be in that vein. It didn't mean that she wanted it though. Just like how Idyll...didn't...want...her…

No.

"No, I can't do it again," Cter sputtered hurriedly as she backed off away from the table. She began to push her new sleeve off her arm. "If this is my magic then I w-won't! I refuse!"

As the discarded sleeve bounced against the wooden table it was as if it had slapped Frioke across the face. Her calm nature crumpled like the limp fabric did. "You're saying that we did wrong in choosing you?" she accused the human walking away with her left arm tucked towards her chest as if it was injured. The accusation had the candlelight flare with whips of fire that swept a moving shadow from Frioke's tensed ears over her furrowed face. "That the Monster Royals made a mistake in choosing you instead of the dozens of human mages that travel to Jarasevo Castle yearly to show their impressive magic and woo with their dazzling knowledge?"

There was an air of desperation that Cter inhaled with a sharp gasp which the words gripped her tightly with. Again Frioke's presence made her flinch, just when her hand touched the door handle. All she had to do was open it and…

And then…

Then what?

"You know how many humans have visited since you became a Monster Mage? Three! Three human mages have come here to show their magic, and they have all showed an equal, if not more prowess in their abilities than you managed the day before Idyll and you were taken here while unconscious. We have a section of the cellar that one mage managed to keep cool for up to a week. It's still being chilled and he is on his way back to Xoff already with a recommendation for the Xoff royals to use his ice magic to help with the growing epidemic there. He will save thousands of lives because of his skill!"

Frioke was out of breath before she'd even finished half of what she wanted to say. Each inhale she took as she granted herself a pause was rough and gravely. Had it been Cter's throat she would've coughed blood.

"He won't save as many as your magic can though, Cter. It is inevitable that what happened with you and Idyll will happen again, but we have a chance now to cultivate the first one. To learn from it and to make sure that we have an explanation for it when it happens again. So that we can use it to further the connection between humans and monsters and not have it be the taut that snaps the string."

The breaths each were like a gust against Cter's back.

"We've been in this situation many times before, but never in one with such potential for one or the other. Being a Monster Mage is not about helping monsters, it is about helping humans and monster. Both races. That's why you are both. Because you need to be a human to even begin to understand what kind of power you have the potential to wield, but also with the humility and fear that the power comes with. Each Monster Mage is different on that scale so that when situations such as yours arise we have multiple perspectives on it. You will be the fourth one, Cter. That is what we have chosen. What all of our perspectives have chosen."

The heaviest of heads fell onto the door with a heavy thud.

"We are asking you to considered every monster as dear a friend as Idyll is to you. Every human as well. For her you have advanced human magic in ways that were not thought possible, and now we ask you to do it for everyone alive and that will be alive. You are not able to, I know that. We know that, but that is why we want to teach you to be able to. This is all a coincidence. You becoming a Monster Mage is a coincidence just as much as you meeting Idyll outside the castle was a coincidence. We are as much aware of that as you are, yet we chose. We chose you, Cter."

They chose her.

But that wasn't the crucial choice.

That one still had to be made.

Not with a high spirit, but with a low one. That was when Cter chose to save Idyll, and that was when she also had to make the choice to be a Monster Mage. To still accept the burdens that would come due to her choice.

But also to prove that the hope that she had was true.

And that it was stronger.

She turned around from the door to her sleeve gripping Frioke's arm. It was held up via purple magic that surrounded both the fabric, the lines within it, and the entirety of Frioke. All Cter had to do was to slid her arm into the empty sleeve.

All she had to do was to make the choice.

"I want to talk with Idyll afterwards." That was Cter's one condition.

"Not about anything I told you here, be it with my mouth or with my memories, but yes, you may. I promise you that."

Then the choice was as clear as it could ever be.

"Tell me about the leaves again, Cter," asked Frioke as the Monster Mage slipped her left arm into the empty sleeve surrounded by the purple magic. "About their shifting colors."

"The leaves spring as green, and become a deeper green during early summer. They stay so until late summer when they begin to shift."

First to yellow which were said to be the most plenty during early autumn. Orange came later, and finally red.

"Keep in mind why we're traveling to Hjearta, Priestess. You were in just a big a hurry as I was when you heard the news."

"I...forgive me, Sir Gerson. If I may explain, this is the first time I visit Hjearta. We are so close now. These colors soon to be outside the windows they're..."

They would be so beautiful.

How else were one supposed to react the first time one sees them?