"Two carriages?"

The journey to Xoff to change Bonny Sallus' magic was important, yes, but what made it necessary to have two carriages? The cargo the Royal Guards were loading on could easily have fit onto just one. Were...were there expectations of an attack or something?

"You still have some sniffles, don't you?" answered Sund from underneath his pulled-over hood shielding him from the rain pouring down from the dark sky above. "One slightly sick Monster Mage is better than two slightly sick Monster Mages."

Fair enough.

"Also," Sund added while holding out his hand to feel at the rain, "since we're traveling to a human country we shouldn't really be sleeping in the same carriage. I'm sure you've experienced the slight disconnect of us being monsters, but looking and talking like humans, so if we, two high-ranking and unmarried humans of man and woman, sleep in the same carriage, it'll bring about a bit of scandalous implication." He massaged his wet fingers together. "Nothing's faster than word of mouth, after all. Word of mouth about something scandalous travels even faster. If only we could harness that."

Even with a human angle to it, Cter wasn't really entirely convinced. "In Hjearta men and women use the sauna without any comments or scandalous implications," she argued underneath her conjured umbrella that sizzled with steam from each drop of rain hitting it. Using her hood in the rain had the heaviness of it being wet pushing down on the crystal brooch in her hair, which was a bit annoying. "Different culture in Xoff?" she hazarded with a throw of her hand over yonder in the vague direction of the human country. "They certainly produce different Monster Mages than Hjearta does."

That tickled Sund, who's snorted chuckle had his Monster Mage hood shaking loose heavy drops of water from it. "Outta step up to finally produce a Monster Mage who can do magic on their own." With a slight tilt of his head he angled his mouth into Cter's view, but not much else. "Good thing it's about to be visited by both the Monster Mages capable of their own magic." The way the top of his hood hung with water-weight over his eyes had Cter guessing that he quirked an eyebrow. "Maybe it'll be that one child you took interest in at Clinic Hill?"

M…

M...something…

Ma…

Manny?

Yes, Manny!

"Manny?" Cter said. "What about him?"

"He has been taken in as one of Bonny Sallus' apprentices. Not as it pertains to medicine though, but in regards to healing magic." Sund extended a finger to the carriage Cter was gonna sleep in. "It's all in the briefing we finished while you were bedridden. Good thing though, if I'm gonna be honest?"

Good thing what, exactly? "That I was bedridden?" That sounded a bit...rude, didn't it? "It was good that I had a high fever that then developed into a nice handful of flu?"

"Misunderstand me correctly, if you would," replied Sund with an innocent shrug. "The delay allowed the message from Bonny Sallus to arrive." The innocence quickly faded from his heightened shoulders. "Well, letters plural, in fact." Sund turned fully to Cter, his eyes half-hidden underneath his hanging hood. "Some of what they detailed was why we decided to not wait until you're entirely healthy, Cter."

As if summoned, Cter felt a few small coughs forcing their way up her chest.

"Yeah, exactly," Sund commented to his colleague coughing inside her closed mouth. "Would you like to read it yourself in your own time or should I explain it?"

With the Royal Guards still being busy carrying wet crates with wet locks of fur giving them problems to see properly, there was still time before Cter and Sund were to board their carriages. "Pray tell, please." Cter couldn't read like that Braille Script skeleton, so hearing it would give more of the weight that Sund hinted at being present in Bonny Sallus' letters.

"The plague that...well...plagued Xoff before has returned, and is stronger than before. Despite Bonny Sallus' doing his best to stock up in case another illness gripped Xoff, it still has Clinic Hill overrun with patients and his apprentices spread out across the country, many of which have not reported back to him." The playful attitude he just had about Xoff had him soured. "I tried to keep a good spirit about this, but I just..." He sighed, causing his hood to drop deeper over his eyes. "That we made those tasteless jests just now has it bitter on my tongue."

Yeah, the tasteless did have that taste for Cter too. Bitter for her as well.

"We'll make it up for them though, won't we, Cter?" While his eyes were darkened by the shadow of his hood cast from the magical light from the street post between him and Cter, his smile still was all that Cter needed to see to confirm what she felt from his aura. "With Bonny Sallus wielding magic more suited for his profession this plague will be but a faint memory before we have the time to return home."

Cter nodded, "We will make it up for them, Sund," and angled up her sleeved arm topped off with a confident fist. "Been a while since I've done magic now, actually." While Cter was deprived of her magical sleeve for just a day or so, she still hadn't done any real magic during her time spent sick. Her soul took a bit longer to recover enough for simple magic like using stasis to bring water and food over to her slumped body lying strangely in her bed. While she could, it still had her soul make a friendly reminder to not push herself and rest up, almost like muscle soreness, but magical.

She hoped that the analogy would continue and that her magic would be stronger after the soreness went away.

"I'm sure you can do some warming up in your carriage while we travel."

That she would. She wasn't about to change Bonny Sallus' magic if she wasn't comfortable with it, after all. Cter had confidence in her ability to do so, even if it would be difficult. Not a lot she could do to practice for it, as it would be something new that would make her crystal magic look dull in comparison. She was about to bring in a new era of magic.

And a closer understanding to what the human soul really was!

"Oh, and we will also be taking the more-safer roads away from any large cities or villages like how you and Kurant traveled last time," said Sund to continue the topic of Bonny Sallus' letters. "The larger roads will be busy with traffic despite commerce taking a hit due to the plague, so to minimize the risk of us two getting infected even further we will be taking the roads that Bonny Sallus will then apologize to us for having to take."

"Anything in his letters about the exact and specific type of magic he wants his to be changed to?" The Royal Guards were beginning to finish up the loading of the carriages, so anything more after Sund's answer Cter would have to read from the briefing. "The earlier I know the better." Really it was but a guess from Cter, but logically it sounded sound to her.

"Connects with Manny, actually." With his right arm thrown up, Sund retracted his robe's wet sleeve to show his magical one underneath. "The human child has a knack for healing magic, one of Bonny's apprentices discovered." He displayed it to Cter who found it amusingly mysterious in how the rain drops that fell closely around it shone briefly from the gently pulsating Cooperative Connection. "Thus, Bonny decided to give Manny a Cooperative Connection so that he could help. He's not one to use children at his clinic as he doesn't believe in a human being a good doctor if their own bodies haven't developed fully. Can't understand anatomy properly when your own is changing, I guess?"

Cter's mirrored Sund's shrug. Neither of them were doctors, so who were they to argue against him?

"Anyways, Bonny figured that you would find it useful if there was at least some healing magic used via a Cooperative Connection nearby for when you change his. Something to get you on the right path, he added rather hastily."

What did Sund mean by that? "Hastily? In what way?" As in, written hastily?

Sund wrote a bit in the air with an invisible quill between his fingers. "His handwriting was a bit more angled and dotted with ink. We think it's because he had to rush to a patient as the color of the ink was varied like a rainbow across his letters. Not a lot of time for the doctor to sit down and breathe with a tougher plague around." He let the invisible quill go as he moved his eyes over to the almost-packed carriages. "More reasons for us to make haste in our travels."

"Again."

"Yes," nodded Sund. "Again." He held out his hand in the rain for a second time. "Would like to get going so that we can ride away from this rain too. It's good that we have it, especially for the flower in the Royal Garden."

"And with yours at Time's Square?" pried Cter friendly. "Sure that you're sure about Kurant taking care of them while you're gone?"

Sund let a small puddle of water form inside his naked left palm. "It feels tempered," he stated. "Good that we get one last before the autumn cold sets in." The small puddle joined the snaking floods between the ridges in the cobblestone via a subdued angle of Sund's hand. "And Kurant needs to put a bit more walking on her brace which is why she offered to take care of the flowers for me. With Bonny Sallus soon having healing magic at his disposal there is a chance that she'll regain the usage of her knee without needing a brace."

"As in Bonny being able to glean more from her human soul via her injury?" Cter wasn't really comfortable with that notion, to be perfectly honest. She knew the hunger the doctor had to discover the true nature of the human soul, and for all intents and purposes he wanted it due to reasons of it being another challenge he wanted to overcome. Cter knew. She was wearing it on her sleeve, after all. Still, when he saw Kurant's soul assert its will over her body due to him and Kry touching where her soul did not want them to touch, his priorities shifted for the briefest of moments to something more...sinister.

Would that resurface with Cter changing his magic to be more appropriate for his line of work? Would that moment of sinister, almost-perverted fascination of what the human soul was capable of become more than just a moment?

"Has the Bonny Sallus inside your sleeve implied such things?" asked Sund back with a nod to Cter's left arm. "Have you felt something from it that could imply that he would do something like that?" He displayed his palm still wet from the small puddle he collected. "I'm not confronting you, Cter. You're the one that knows most about this and thus it is you that have the final word about it. Don't be afraid to voice your concerns. I'm only asking to have you expand on it."

Cter knew that. Sund's expression when he asked back was that of wanting to know more and not furrowed in disgust towards Cter daring to speak against the great Bonny Sallus. "There have been a few seldom times when I have maybe felt something that could have been Bonny's influence."

It held as much water as a drop smashing against the cobblestone ground.

"Could have been me though," Cter added with an unknowing shrug. "I don't know, really. Been so long ago and at such few occasions that it's hard to tell if it was Bonny's influence or if it was just me."

With his tempered hand on his recently shaven chin, Sund ruminated a bit on what Cter said. While he stood still while thinking, rainwater began collecting on the rim of his hood into drops. "Have you had any of those seldom happenings happen after you discovered your own magic?" Once he moved, the collected water came loose, trailing with the turn of his head. "For me, the influence of Sir Gerson and Priestess Frioke faded after I had discovered my own barricade magic. Granted, their influence were a bit more than what you have with Bonny Sallus, from what I understand, so for me it was easy to tell that I was missing something, quote unquote. You pretty much used Bonny Sallus' magic as a source rather than a reason for your magic from the get-go, so if he managed to sneak through and influence you then those times must've been because of you using a lot of magic."

What Sund said did make sense, as the last time Cter felt Bonny's influence was during her carriage ride back home from Hjearta. "When I conjured up those perhaps-independent images of Terri Fyed and Huvett and Huvtvao I felt something similar to the glee that Bonny felt when he realized that Kurant's soul was speaking to him. In my case it was my own though, in a very specific and still-technically-not way."

"Yeah I do remember Kry being a bit pushy when you detailed it for the first time," said Sund while shaking his head slightly. "Sir Gerson was barely able to have him sit down again. I don't blame Kry for wanting to, but it's clear that your way of sorta-not-really-maybe-perhaps speaking to your soul was reliant on too many specific factors and variables coming together for it to be viable for you to do it again, even less with us other Monster Mages."

He threw a thumb over his shoulder. "I mean, Sir Gerson would probably object quite violently to us first worsening the relationship between the Hjearta Royal Mage of Ice and the Royal Butler Huvett and Huvtvao who's goal in life is to become as human as us Monster Mages are monsters to the point where they still have the same ratio of confusion with who they are and animosity towards the other, but even worse than what they had when you met them so that it would be easier for us Monster Mages who don't have your particular kind of magic to sorta-not-really-maybe-perhaps speak with our souls in a way that wouldn't even give us any clear answers and would just tell us that we were about to fall asleep from the excursion."

Sund took a deep breath, enough to almost inhale the falling drops of rain in front of him.

"As I said, a bit too specific a scenario to have it be viable for us."

Cter was completely in agreement there. "Would be comforting to know that your souls are just as boisterous and sassy as mine though." Solidarity in knowing that Cter wasn't the only one with a soul that would click its magical tongue at its human vessel wasn't too much to ask for, was it? "Would love to have Kry's to be the most juvenile."

"That would've been something," agreed Sund with a chuckle that caused rain to dislodge from his shoulders. "And mine would be the most sophisticated of the bunch?"

Well…

"If it gets along with Sir Gerson it must be."

How else was he able to use Sir Gerson's magic? As if he would let any slumped soul use his magic.

"Fair point," Sund agreed again with another, deeper chuckle while eyeing his sleeve. "Or perhaps he did discipline it?" His head shook with his giggle. "We should stop talking about this lest we get too curious and implore that we ruin the diplomatic relations we have built up with Hjearta's court just so that we can have a laugh at Kry's expense."

"An opportunity worth its weight in gold though," Cter sang while her sleeved fingers danced. "Humans in the future might even have their souls as partners, in a way? Pets, perhaps?" Maybe she was getting a bit too much ahead of herself. "But yes, you're right, we should take it down a few notches." Cter was getting so distracted that her magical umbrella had begun to fade. "Otherwise I won't be able to stop thinking about it and be distracted for the entire journey to Clinic Hill."

"Not blaming either you or me for getting excited and letting our minds run wild with the opportunities that will come from you showing that it is possible to change a monster's magic." Sund eyed his sleeve again. "I can't stress enough how much my excitement is pushing away my jealousy, Cter. Us four Monster Mages are going to be stated in the history books as the four that closed the gap between monsters and humans."

While Cter wasn't for bragging, according to her, she did fully agree with Sund about the four of them being the ones to close the monster and human gap. Had she been on her own she wasn't sure that she would even have begun to figure out her own magic. She really needed her colleagues to come to grips with it. It was by her own volition and determination that she found it out, yes, but a flower can't grow in just hot air. The seed of her own magic grew from the ones around her.

From the Monster Mages.

"Hey! Cter!"

And of course…

"Conjure an umbrella for me too!"

Idyll.

"Would it hurt her to say 'please' to a higher-ranking officer?" tutted Sund from underneath his soaked hood.

"Steady on with those accusations," replied Cter after she lunged a closed, magical umbrella like a spear over to Idyll standing at the edge of the castle gate. "She told me about your little meeting before you returned my sleeve."

Loud coughs shook the soaked hood until it was almost as dry as a desert. "No idea what you're talking about."

"Gotta figure out a better excuse than stopping her to talk with the reasoning that you're making sure she can handle if Sir Gerson confronts her," Cter suggested friendly to the coughing hood who only hummed in response. "Otherwise she'll start to suspect a few things."

"Like what?"

"Isn't this romantic, Cter?" whisked Idyll with perfect timing as she spun around one her wet heel underneath her gifted magical umbrella, prompting Cter to bounce her eyebrows playfully towards Sund. "You and I underneath the rain with umbrellas in the dark and–"

"What is it you want from Clinic Hill?" Cter interrupted the painfully weak acting coarsely before the twee of Idyll's spinning lifted her apron up too much. "Besides..."

The twee did indeed disappear from Idyll like a colander without a bottom, and quicker than quick she pointed an accusatory finger at her Monster Mage friend wearing a reserved and hummed smile. "You did promise to drag him back here by his mustache, you know?" Idyll confronted with a slight lean forward. "And if he's shaven it so that you can't then you make him a magical one to drag him here by, alright? Make it crystal, fire, ice, whatever."

Otherwise her aura made it very clear that she was gonna jump in the carriage with Cter.

"Haven't really managed whatever magic just yet." Cter made light of her answer by pretending to think with her sleeved hand massaging her chin. "But I'm sure I can figure something out." She made a glance at Sund who was looking away from the two friends while subduing his aura. Exactly why Cter didn't know, but she did appreciate him giving her and Idyll space to talk. "So apart from Sarbor, what is it you want back from Clinic Hill?"

"Just you and Sarbor." Idyll held out a large, warm bag heavy with baked goods underneath where her and Cter's magical umbrellas overlapped. "Here, since the weather's pretty poor."

The bag smelled sweet and savory. "Actually I quite like traveling in the rain. The drops hitting the rooftop is quite soothing in a way."

"Well I'm sorry for thinking about you then," Idyll sighed with too much slack to her shoulders for it to be genuine anger. "A good deed is never just good, is it? Always these damn canvases."

"Caveats."

"Shut up."

Well excuse Cter for helping.

"You knock that smug smile off your face or I'll hand these...savory...freshly baked...scones and cinnamon buns over to your driver here," came a slow, bag-massaging threat from Idyll hunkering down with a sinister look to her eyes that told Cter that it was indeed a real threat.

To Cter's driver, ey? The hooded figure that was stood next to her with said hood soaked through? "I'm sure my...driver...would share with me."

"Why did you pause like tha–" Idyll shook her head. "Already getting cabin fever and she hasn't even started her journey." Shook it hard. "Golly me." After another exasperated sigh she resorted to just pushing the warm bag into Cter's sleeved hand. "I don't got time for this I need to prepare for Sarbor's meal, for fluffbun's sake." Her hand stayed on Cter's though, and with it she brought her Monster Mage friend in for a hug that damned the scones and buns to a squished state. "I'll see you in a bit, Cter. You come back safe and with Sarbor, okay."

Cter replied to the hug with one of her own. "I will, Idyll. I'll see you again soon. He will too."

The two broke off their hugs before the rain managed to find a way through their poorly angled umbrellas. As they did, Idyll managed her necklace into Cter's hand. "For him to feel me, okay? It might help him remember that he has a little sister waiting for him."

"Apart from the buns?"

Idyll's tongue caught a drop or two as she extended it towards her friend. "As if you'll be able to save some for that long. Give some of these to Sund too, remember," said Idyll as she began walking back to the castle. She pointed over to the second carriage. "Even if he's dry and comfortable I'm sure he'll still appreciate something that I made with my hands." Her wink was heard through the rain and the sizzle from Cter's magic.

And even through the soaked hood.

"Just you and Sarbor back from Clinic Hill?" Sund muttered after clearing his throat a bit. "Ouch, that's gonna cost a few scones and buns to make me feel better about."

Cter looked inside the bag. "You know what?" she commented after a surprised jiggle to her head. The smell and warmth almost had the carriage windows half the courtyard away steaming up. It was a dense smell, both of savory and of sweet, that had the magical umbrella sizzle from within.

"That would actually help me."