"Just be careful when you step out, Cter. Your legs are gonna want to fall down onto the ground as fast as they can when you disembark, so keep in mind that there might be wet mud or a puddle outside."
While Cter was well aware of the fact that it had indeed rained for almost a week in a row she still heeded Kurant's warning and peeked out the small window on the carriage door before she opened it to step out. What greeted her was an almost ruined road with only small patches of solid ground to step onto. Up the road where they came from the deep tracks from the heavy carriage were already beginning to collapse and be filled-in as if the carriage had never grazed it.
Cter felt like a ballerina in her mind as she leaped out with one leg stretched forwards to reach a dry patch, however she didn't feel like one in her body as her legs popped like a dropped assortment of pots when she landed. She groaned in reflex, but it didn't hurt as much as her groan made it out to be. Being outside the carriage she could much easier wield a flame big and powerful enough to dry the road around the carriage so that Kurant did not have to make the same leap as she did.
Whether to use flames rather than ice to solidify the ground was chosen due to how Cter felt that the surrounding temperature was. While the continuous rain had dipped the temperature down from summer to early spring it was still a Xoff early spring rather than a Hjearta early spring. The sun was also out after having been deprived its pleasure of warming its many children, and both the sting in Cter's eyes as well as on her exposed skin where her mantle hung around made it clear that the sun was very much trying to make up for the days it had been hidden.
Either that or it was a normal Xoff sun which shone as normal.
In that case no way in hell would Cter be able to live in Xoff for a longer period of time. She would become redder than Barbeqa after seeing a Royal Guard leave his or her plate on the table for some always-inadequate reason.
"You must be one of the Monster Mages!" came an excited cheer from outside the fabric of Cter's worn hood. "Welcome!"
With her right hand, Cter brought down her hood to face the human that spoke to her. The tanned face she met was weathered, yet still with life that gave the welcoming smile a brimming flair to it. It faded for a second though as hesitant and suspicious air widened the nostrils. "You don't..." said the old lady with her hand beginning to raise to point an accusatory finger at Cter. Halfway up though the brimming flair returned at the summon of a snap of the wrinkly fingers. "Oh! Right! You must be the Fourth Monster Mage!" the elder of the village piqued with an apologetic tone to her crescendo. "Pardons higher than Mt. Ebott, Monster Mage. It was just recently that we were informed of a Fourth Monster Mage, and my memory has not been servicing me well these last couple of years."
Cter lifted her right hand before the Village Elder bowed too deep to not be able to stand up again. "No harm done, elder." It felt a bit ticklish on her tongue referring to a human as a Village Elder. It was always Romrom as the elder back in her village in Hjearta. "Thank you for meeting us."
"Ah, and Kurant!" the Village Elder greeted to the second Monster Mage putting her healthy foot onto the carriage step. "How wonderful to see you again after all these years. Since we were not explicitly informed about the purpose of your visit I'm guessing it has to do about your knee again? I know Bonny has been pacing around about it in-between the pauses he gets from pacing around about the epidemic."
Curiously, Cter followed the Village Elder's arm pointing up the winding road leading up the large hill overlooking the village at the bottom of it. The road looked to be unharmed of the rain, as did the one it was connected to leading out the village. It was a wider road and more maintained than the one the two Monster Mages had traveled on in the carriage. From her slender knowledge of Xoff she guessed that it was a road connecting the village to the more larger cities of the country. Due to the clinic on the hill, Bonny Sallus' Academy of Medicine and Tinctures, without a doubt. It was well-traveled, that road.
Hopefully because of trade.
Although Cter knew better than to believe her own lie.
"He is truly a saint, Dr. Sallus," continued the elder with a nostalgic sigh. "Poor thing don't get much sleep nowadays, and it is because of him that we have not suffered the same winds of miasma that has swept our country." She straightened her back with a focused inhale that almost seemed to smooth the many wrinkles on her face. "But enough about being forlorn and downtrodden. Dr. Sallus says that it is bad for my back and neck to look down with fear and misery during my life's fall, so I shall remember not! Cter, was it? The Fourth Monster Mage, Cter?"
Cter's nod turned into a bow. "At your service, Village Elder."
"Oh I've no doubts about that," the elder chuckled with surprising vigor. "Pray tell, you wouldn't be having your arm ablaze to dry the ground for Kurant, would you?"
With a jolted bounce to her eyebrows seeing her left arm and sleeve engulfed in a deep vortex of flames that swirled around like water on an oil fire Cter emitted a surprised yelp, "Woah," before reducing it to a more subdued flame which she could hold in her closed fist. To be fair to her, she was interrupted just as she was building up the flames, but that it managed that much without her noticing both frightened her and piqued her curiosity.
If she could do that without thinking and without any real permanent magic in her sleeve…
"Well I don't have any doubts about you being a Monster Mage now, Cter." The Village Elder found her own joke very amusing. So did Cter, but not really as much as the elder did. "If I may be so brash, could you wait for a little while before using your magic? I know the children have been eager for your arrival so could I ask for you to wait for a little while for me to bring them here? I know your carriage did not carry just you so I shall also bring some of the adults too to help you carry your luggage up to the clinic."
Cter looked to Kurant for confirmation. To Cter the prospect was fine by her as there was a nice grassy slope of the hill next to her which she could lie down on and enjoy the sun for a bit while she waited. However if it was fine with Kurant was another question. It would be a bit rude to just lie down in the grass while another one watched incapable of doing so themselves.
Suffice to say, Kurant wasn't the most chipper about having to wait for much longer to get out of the carriage which she and Cter had been in for well past a month, almost two. Even if it was for the children it was still a hard sell for Kurant. From where Cter stood she could clearly see Kurant impatiently drum with her fingers inside the carriage, with the hesitation being invisible from where the Village Elder stood a few lengths in front of the carriage. "We..." Kurant began without really knowing where and how to continue. "We could always ride further into the village and–"
"That was not a part of my orders from Sir Gerson," the hooded driver interrupted without emotion and only a gentle tilt of their flowing robe. "I have deliveries to make outside this village before bringing you back. Never was it specified that I were to bring the carriage into this village."
The impatient drumming turned into an annoyed grasp of the frame of the carriage door. "A written order is superseded by a spoken one with more current information when given by two Royal Guards of equal ranks and–"
"Ha!" the hooded driver interrupted with enough emotion to fill their previous lack of as well as plenty more lacking that could be followed. "You're only the same rank when pronounced with a legalese accent, Monster Mage."
While Cter could only guess as to the frankly snarky tone the hooded driver had towards Kurant, it was more likely that the last handful of days of constant rain had soured both the hooded driver's robe and their mood. There was still drops clinking at the metal structure underneath the driver's footrest.
"So no, this carriage will not travel into the village. So please, by the order of Sir Gerson of the Royal Guard, do please make haste to bring help for the deliveries to this village," the hooded driver turned over their shoulder with their heavily soaked hood hanging even deeper over their void-black face, "be it monsters or the less alive deliveries. Tra la la."
No emotion in the song either, only spoken out of contractual obligation.
There was less of a need for Cter to dry the ground with how fuming Kurant was. Her aura ignited in a way that surely reached all the way back to Jarasevo. It interrupted Queen Toriel and King Asgore's tea for sure.
With a respectful bow the Village Elder began moving towards the outskirts of the village which had began congregating with curious inhabitants. "I'll be back within a few moments then."
"Guess I'll finish packing up while I wait then," Kurant huffed through her narrowed nostrils when the Village Elder was out of earshot. Her head tilted first sharply away from the hooded driver, and then more softly over to Cter."You want your documents in your luggage?" Her eyes underneath the slim openings between her eyelids shot back towards the front of the carriage. "Since I'll have to wait inside the carriage, that is."
The poison thrown from Kurant's words did not seem to faze the driver, who went back to acting like a mannequin as was their natural state.
Cter sighed through her lips while she laid herself down onto the grassy incline with her sleeve as a pillow behind her head, fire magic removed. It was still warm to the touch from the previous magical fire she'd forgotten about, just like the sun's radiance was on her face. A comfortable sting which made Cter's skin feel more alive. She could feel a tan building instantly.
Hopefully it would just be a tan and not a burn.
As to not be embarrassed with stains from the grass on her clothes she made sure to give the entire area of her back a thin layer of stasis just to keep the touch between her clothes and the grass separate. She could also have summoned something out of conjuration magic, but that would not have preserved the feeling of the grass bending against her back. The stasis only kept the separate touch from each blade away from her clothes and not the entire feeling. Many drops versus a cohesive lake, so to speak.
"Any preference into which pocket the documents go?" was asked out of the carriage door. "Or can you sort them out later?"
"Wherever they fit," Cter shouted back while also peeking an eye down the road towards the village to make sure there weren't a group of humans walking up to see a Monster Mage slumped in the grass while another slaved away inside the carriage.
Primarily, that is.
Well, tell a lie, secondarily.
Primarily Cter was really comfortable lying in the grass and drinking in the sunlight amid a field of dew-slicked grass. Last time she could remember doing that was in Soul's School when one of Professor Leraull's lectures were canceled. With the amount of purple blobs taking over her vision she easily imagined her younger self lying in the grass next to her.
Strange that her younger self was wearing more purple than she was, but with that dissonance out of the way she gave her younger self a proud nod. "Study that lecture," she gave as friendly advice before sighing away all the pride from her nod. "Because then you'll pass the final exam for sure."
The scroll with her result was still unopened and inside a drawer in her room at Jarasevo Castle. Behind one, even. The bottom drawer she removed completely, then placed the scroll behind it, and shut it close. No one was gonna look behind a drawer, just inside one.
Cter's purple self stood up and ran up the more maintained road as she looked up it. Perhaps her younger-and-purpler self was hurrying back to Jarasevo Castle to open the scroll for her?
Well good luck to her then, honestly.
Because Cter wasn't about to do so.
Ever.
"By the way, Cter."
The way Kurant said it suggested that she was moving towards the door to speak to Cter directly, which had Cter mutter a silent curse as she stood up from her comfortable lie down. She brushed herself off and took a quick glance up and down her to make sure there weren't any grass stains.
Did her purple self see any?
Well first she had to turn around a bit.
None?
None.
Positive?
Positive.
Good.
"How far did you get with your studies during our travel? You read a lot, but you seemed stuck in some places." Kurant presented herself with two sets of luggage in either hands which she sat down with some stasis to not have them land violently on the carpet floor. "Was it about the routines for hosting and escorting human emissaries?" she guessed with an opened hand relieved of luggage handles. "I know I had some difficulty wrapping my head around the different distances we had to keep and at which angle from which shoulder depending if we were the main escort or a secondary part of it," Kurant continued while motioning her different examples with her hands and arms on her own body. "Really nobody cares about it except Sir Gerson and the Sir Gerson equivalents from Xoff and Hjearta, but since they are usually the last ones that check up on things before you're sent off with the one you are escorting you still need to keep it in mind."
Actually Cter had not gotten to that part…
She had been stuck on the different cuisines served at Jarasevo depending on the different missions from the human delegates and had been imagining how Idyll would cook them. Quite a lot of them were complex to show both hospitality and to promote the tastes to the humans, Cter guessed.
None of the dishes served with egg as an ingredient specified the shell on though which had Cter's mouth pucker with childish dismay.
"Xoff about two step behind on the left and with Hjearta it's one to the right. I think it has to do with Xoff rationalizing that the attacker will most likely come from the non-dominant side and with Hjearta it is because you can much quicker position yourself between the one you're protecting and the assailant." Kurant breathed out. "But no one is ever going to attack either the person that is important enough to be escorted by a Monster Mage as well as a Monster Mage period so just keep your aura and brow intimidating and enjoy the walk."
Cter spotted a slight flinch with Kurant's bad knee.
"Oh and speaking of walk," Kurant quickly added with a wave towards the village. "Finally I'll get out of this damn carriage."
Her cursing was loud enough that the driver definitely heard, but not loud enough to be heard over the ecstatic whispering from the crowd closing in from the village. The Village Elder was in the lead, flanked on either side by children both like and unlike Kurant in their skin, eyes, and hair. Some must have had parents from the more southern part of Xoff where Kry was from.
What was an escort covering all angles from both shoulders called again?
"Greetings again, Monster Mages," said the Village Elder with another bow that the rest of her entourage mimicked. Seeing that many humans bow for Cter made her cheeks fluster. It tingled more in her cheeks than the sun did so she raised up the collar of her mantle to hide the worst of it. "Do forgive, but the excitement of your visit went a bit further than just the children."
"Any of you with magical potential?" Kurant asked with a smile. She raised her sleeved arm above her. "Raise your hand."
Three...four...five…
Five.
Five!
Five of the twenty or so children raised their hands! That was...a lot! Quite a lot!
With surprise screaming from her face Cter turned to Kurant who had predicted the reaction. "Mt. Ebott," she said while pointing over to the large mountain seen stood just on the edge of the horizon. "And Mt. Ymmet, of course," she added while pointing to the other mountain a bit further away. They had been behind hills and sparse trees the last leg of the journey. "Bonny Sallus picked this village as it is located like two interwoven Cooperative Connection lines from both Mt. Ebott and Mt. Ymmet. The angle of which helps with potency for healing magic, he says. Proof if proof needed is that the children in this and adjacent counties are a generation or two ahead when it comes to magical potential."
Cter followed Kurant's motion over the heads of the children stood in front in various stages of squirming from being in the presence of two Monster Mages.
"Would explain why you saw so many Xoff students at Soul's School, right Cter?"
Good point. Cter just hadn't put a lot of thought into it. She figured that it was just a mix of the litter between humans from Xoff, humans from Hjearta, and monsters from Monster Country. She never really put much thought into the specifics of the ratio between them all.
Students from Xoff drank as much as the students from Hjearta during the weekends so there weren't really anything that separated the two countries at Soul's School. What with the humans using aura to mingle more than speaking as quote unquote homework, and with the monsters being so widely different in their forms, visual differences just kinda fell by the wayside among the many-discarded corks rolling into the corners of the common rooms.
"Guess so," Cter shrugged back as an answer. Again, she didn't think much about it at the time of her schooling and she had been thinking about it even less ever since. "So..." She waved both to Kurant and the humans with her sleeved arm beginning to swirl with fire. "Shall I?"
One of the kids holding his hand up from Kurant's question began to impatiently wave it too to get Cter's attention. She nodded for him to say what was on his mind. "Y-You're a Monster Mage, r-right?" the child asked after some internal debating whether he should or not. The way he rolled his hands together made him a couple of years younger than what Cter had originally guessed at. "S-so h-how c-come you're a hum–"
"Manny!" a woman's voice chastised from inside the human lake. "Quiet!"
Cter looked to Kurant for how to react and what to say. When Kurant then cleared her throat to begin explaining Cter again quenched the fire to just a small flicker inside her cage of fingers.
No drying the road yet again. A few more times and Cter's magic would have been used up. She had saved for the entire journey, only for it to run out before she even got to do anything?
"You're correct in that from the outside we do look human. We have skin, bones, muscle, and blood, just like you, young human," Kurant began while pulling on her cheek and tapping on her knuckles. Her hand then moved towards her chest, "However our souls inside are that of monsters," her sleeve, "because of the memories given to us by the Monster King and Monster Queen of Monster Country," and finally towards Cter. "You may look at Cter and see and feel her to be human, but when I, or any other monster for that matter, feel at her aura it is as monster as any other, perhaps even more. You will feel that as well when your magical potential is realized, young human."
The humans began some hushed mumbling as Kurant let her answer sink in for a while. "I hope that sates your curiosity for now." With a flair of her hand she raised her index finger as an asterisk to her statement. "Sates it for now, that is. Never be afraid of asking questions when what you see don't conjoin with what you feel, human. It will help you understand your soul better."
Kurant's well-articulated answer lifted the otherwise-tense spirit that began haunting the humans due to Manny's question, and the tension relaxed among the collective sigh that would have dried the ground had they been a bit closer.
They weren't, so Cter ignited her arm for a third time.
Before she could slam the fire down the depth of a hand down into the wet mud to dry it from below and up Kurant stopped Cter for just one more moment. "Those of you who have a magical potential please open your soul and aura to feel and learn if you are able to." After her last request though, Cter was allowed to work her magic.
Finally.
The vortex of flames surrounded Cter's left arm up to her shoulder, with the massive flames stroking the height of her cheek and head giving her hair a more living nature to it as the orange-red flames consumed the entire left side of her body.
A mix of impressive and terrified gasps emerged jointly from the onlooking crowd. Many curious and tenderly small auras hesitantly explored Cter which flared even brighter and warmer than her summoned flames. One aura was more impressed than the others though.
Kurant's.
With a cheeky smile Cter slammed her left palm into the soft ground the same way Kurant did her stasis onto the carpet of the carriage. From her spread fingers she sent out her flames first like pipes to reach as far as they had to, bringing with them streaks of parched soil which became briefly obscured by steam that had everything wobble for a couple of seconds as it rose from the ground with loud hisses. Once she was sure that the streaks had reached the other side of the road Cter widened her fingers even more and expanded her flames horizontally. The same parched-pale in the mud and rising steam were painted in a circle with the diameter of the carriage's length, with her aura being the sphere to her magic's circle. The dried mud crackled amid the rising steam, and settled into solidity.
The road was dried and walkable.
And Kurant was impressed. "Nicely done, Monster Mage," she congratulated as she stepped onto the dried ground without a second's thought to it being soft. "You've made your first presentation of your magic to a foreign interest. How do you feel?"
Well she felt rather dirty on her left hand, and she kinda used up all of Frioke's borrowed magic, so…
With a friendly gesture Kurant froze the mud on Cter's left hand and sleeve which Cter could easily shake off before any of the humans got close enough to see that she was out of magic. "You'll get your permanent magic before the end of the day, don't worry." Kurant nodded up the hill. "I'm sure Bonny Sallus will be taking us in since we have an appointment with him."
The two chuckled together, however Cter only did so because Kurant did. She was a bit winded, to be honest. She'd never really done such huge allotment of magic in one go before, and she needed a few seconds to process the feeling.
"These boxes are for delivery up to the clinic," Kurant had begun to direct as Cter stood in thought. "These should go with me and Cter. These are for the Royal Guard office on Wide Street."
How did Cter feel about it? About having so much power at her disposal? And about having more power at her disposal in just a couple of hours?
Cter looked to the glistening eyes and expressions of the children of the village.
"Yooo..." dripped out of their mouths.
Cter did not know what that meant verbally, but she knew what it meant emotionally.
The same emotion she felt!
Fantastical!