"Greetings, Monster Mage."

A tired greeting from the human doctor met with a tired hand raised in response from the Monster Mage. She didn't respond, as she didn't find it in her to say anything. Cter was tired. Drained from the hours that had passed with the knowledge that Sund was laid sick with the plague had done nothing but swirl inside of her like a painful vortex. No color at all to her aura, just a gray that was flatter than flat.

She had to say something though…

"Greetings, doctor."

Even if it was more a sighed exhale rather than anything with energy to it. As Sarbor Fech approached the conjured stairs Cter had made for him to make it over the Clinic Hill barricade it became clearer and clearer to Cter that the tired she felt was not even close to the one Sarbor carried with him. In a way it was refreshing, but in a heavier way it was more salt in the wounds.

That he slowed down with suspicion tugging impatiently at his large mustache as he neared the teal-shimmering stairs didn't help to lift the mood. "They're safe," Cter said without enough energy to mask her annoyance at Sarbor approaching the stairs like a cold lake without a prior warm soak in a sauna. "You can walk over them."

His step onto the first step was slow as if trying to make sure he wasn't stepping on any rusty nails barefoot, again testing Cter's patience. Sund was sick, dammit! Why with all of the hesitance? It curled Cter's expression, souring it into a deep scowl. She humored the thought of just grabbing the tip-toeing doctor with stasis magic and just throw him over the brick wall!

Luckily for him, while he climbed the stairs slowly, he still climbed them. Even if he treated each teal-colored step like a patch of slick ice that he needed to ease his weight down on to not fall, he still made progress, albeit very slow. Slow enough that Cter's arms had folded over each other by the time the doctor had reached the top of the magical stairs where he stopped to look down.

How deep was his aversion to magic? So deep that he forgot how stairs worked? This was the big brother that Idyll wanted Cter to bring back to her? Cter had promised, yes, but should she when he was so scared of magic?

If he was so abhorrently vexed by stairs how would he react to his sister who was made out of magic? How did he treat his monster colleagues up on Clinic Hill?

Cter scoffed with a sideways glance away from the doctor slowing his way down the magical stairs. "Humans…" she whispered bitterly. Her crossed arms tightened to suppress the thought of dissipating the steps behind Sarbor and have the ones in front of him beginning to fade. That would have gotten some speed in his step, maybe even had his mustache trail behind him like two thin flags.

The image of it had Cter chuckling to herself.

"Will you take me to the patient, please?" asked the doctor after a startled jolt as Cter faded away her magic behind him as his feet touched the ground again. Without the startled tone in his voice it was as if he was completely oblivious to the way he had just acted towards Cter's magic. "He is in Clinic Village, I assume?"

"With all haste?" Cter replied with a quirked brow. "Since time is of the essence?"

"Of course," nodded Sarbor. "The earlier we can get a proper diagnosis and start treatment, the better."

The forest-green eyes moved on their own to the faint, ghostly teal that lingered after her magic. "Right," fell off her tongue sourly as her eyes moved back to meet Sarbor's. "And with all haste means that we'll be employing more magic." Cter paused to observe Sarbor's reaction, which was as tightened and reluctant as she expected. "That won't be a problem for you, doctor? You're here for the best of the patient, aren't you?"

Behind his large mustache Sarbor's teeth clenched, pushing the combed, dark hairs down and out. It was as if he had just then realized how he had acted with the magic, as if it had just slipped his mind completely! His eyes darted around for some form of escape, which to his immense luck, he found. "What about the carriage?" he suggested with a point down the hill. "That one is for us, no?"

Yes, yes it was.

However that was not what the magic was needed for.

"After you, doctor," Cter offered with generous courtesy that wasn't deserved in the slightest. "It'll be a quick and bumpy ride though, so be ready." She followed Sarbor as he straightened his felt jacket by its low ends and headed down the rest of Clinic Hill. Once he was close enough to the carriage to begin to reach for the door Cter swung it open with stasis magic, causing him another startle. "With all haste," she reminded from just behind his shoulder, stopping just short of pushing Sarbor into the carriage. Once he had planted his unsure seat at one end of the carriage Cter sat down on the other and closed the door magically.

She waited for a few moments after the carriage had calmed its bumpy start for her to stand up again and gesture for Sarbor's arm. "Give me your arm, doctor."

He didn't, at first.

"I'm right handed," he remarked after switching his reached arm to his left one. Again he was testing Cter's patience with his doubt towards her abilities. "This won't be risking anything, won't it? I still need the usage of both my arms, preferably."

"The Third Monster Mage, Sund, your patient," Cter reminded again with harsh emphasize, "has surrounded himself with his barricade magic to keep the miasma from spreading, we believe, and thus we have to get through it for you to meet with him." She took the doctor's left arm a bit harder than she meant to, but just as hard as she wanted to. "I will be giving you a temporary Cooperative Connection to use to get through Sund's barricade magic."

From her pocket she took out the necklace Idyll ahd given her to give Sarbor. It was not how Idyll had imagined the handing-over to be, but it was what was necessary. The human doctor took the necklace timidly in his right hand, inspecting the crystal jewel color sunset-orange. There were no feathers falling inside it, yet. "It will connect to your memories of your sister, Idyll Fech, so as you call upon her image or voice in your head, it'll activate her magic in the necklace which then activates the temporary Cooperative Connection I'm to give you, allowing you passage through the barricade magic via my own crystal magic."

It was a brutish solution, essentially kicking the door in rather than try to pick the lock, and would also alert Sund directly since it was an attack on his magic. Hopefully he would understand though that it was Cter and Sarbor Fech that entered his house. So on top of her magically kicking the door in Cter would also magically scream her name as loudly as possible for Sund to understand that it was hers.

With the felt suit's left arm enchanted with the necessary temporary Cooperative Connection, Cter gave back Sarbor his arm. He looked at it like he wanted to take it off his shoulder and lay it down away from him. "So this is..." His mustache again curled down as he inspected his arm from as far away as he managed to. "This is a Cooperative Connection?" He acted like his left arm was a venomous snake, which was a bit too much. "It's..." The necklace he held with a bit-more reverence though.

"It's what you need to do your job, doctor," Cter cut in with a whip of her tongue. "You only have to imagine and let the feeling of your memories of your little sister wash over you to be able to go through the barricade magic. You can even have your eyes closed if you want. I only need you to treat Sund." She leaned back with her arms crossed again. Just as bitterly as before. "Nothing more."

The ire was palpable. Had there been a glass of milk in the carriage it would have soured immediately.

It wasn't just from Cter though.

"Understand, Monster Mage..."

It wasn't just a bitter aura that flickered with exasperated frustration.

"Magic to me has done nothing good."

For underneath the bushy eyebrows there were not only shadows born out of tiredness.

"And you have done less to help it."

But out of loathing distaste to boot.

"By almost killing my sister with yours."

Cter looked to the side, hiding her face underneath the loose part of her hair. It shouldn't have come as a surprise to her that he knew, yet it did. "I didn–" She halted her tongue as her eyes got stuck on the orange necklace for a brief moment. Her response could not be a reaction, for that would just have played right into Sarbor's point. "It's behind us," Cter instead said after a few, long seconds of thinking. "Both me and Idyll." From underneath her hiding veil she met Sarbor's furrowed brow. "It happened, and that I won't hide. Know however that it did not happen out of anything spiteful from me against her. Neither of us could have known what could have happened, and now it is behind us. The both of us. She has forgiven me, and that was the first thing she did when she woke up."

Dammit!

Too much of a response!

"That so?" the human doctor murmured under his breath while again inspecting his arm, keeping the necklace as far away from it as possible while still holding on to it. He didn't find a lot that he could agree halfway with the Monster Mage on among the faintly glowing lines that ran down and perpendicular on his sleeve. "Well, I don't see no reason why you should lie to me about it other than just being spiteful, and frankly that I don't have either the time nor energy to pursue the truth out of you should that be the case. However, just because my sister trusts you doesn't mean that I should. She is a monster and I am not. A distinction that you might be tasked to wipe away, Monster Mage, and perhaps Dr. Sallus too to boot, but it is a distinction that is always pushed wide again each and every single day on Clinic Hill."

As Sarbor's words settled inside the bumping carriage, Cter realized something about Sarbor's distaste.

While yes, he was averted to magic to a point where it was bordering comical, and yes, it did stem from a source of great personal tragedy, it also wasn't something that he was clinging onto out of spite. Not fully, no.

"Compared to going from something monster to something human there is a chasm wider than the distance between Mt. Ebott and Mt. Ymmet when going from something human to something monster. Humans using magic? Easy, so much so that you can give me magic to use without the faintest sign of effort from you." Sarbor lifted up his left arm across in front of him. "Even if you need to put my little sister's magic in a necklace it's still much easier than should it be the inverse. Humans wandering into monster territory is something we're almost invited to do with just how easy it is. That ease is a double-edged sword, however. Entering through a door should be just as easy as exiting it, right? If the one way is easy then the other way should be the same?"

While Cter understood that the question was aimed at her she didn't answer it as Sarbor wasn't looking to hear her side of it, but just to tell his.

And because of that, her soul which had been so loud during her walk with Onyia the day before was quiet.

Outside, the edge of the village was coming into view.

"For how easy it is for a human to act monster, the reverse is different as different can be. So much so that I haven't heard or seen any at all. If not even Dr. Sallus can achieve that, then who can? The monster who has dedicated himself to explore and to further something that is purely human, id est medicine, has not gained any progress at all in becoming closer to a human than he was when he started." Sarbor's mustache lowered again at its tips, but differently than before. More lamenting.

"It's...hard to know that all of his accomplishments haven't done anything to bring him closer to what motivated him to dedicate his life. That he is walking down a path with no goal to it, potentially. It is just that though, potentially. To him that means that there's still hope, and we all know that despite our differences, hope is what both humans and monsters cling onto."

Again Cter found herself being opened up towards. Again she was the missing piece that someone else needed to have a reason to open up what they had wanted to say for years. She was a Monster Mage, a being between monster and human. Where exactly she was on the scale was up to the beholder, and always they beheld Cter on their scale as exactly where they needed her to be.

Her magic might have been changing a monster's magic, but that didn't stop others from changing her to what they needed.

"Still though," Sarbor continued after a long sigh that fluttered at his mustache and softened his bushy furrow. "Even with hope being what the two races share, the differences pile and pile. Climbing down from that pile as a human to monster is much more feasible than climbing up as a monster to human. How do you become sick as a monster? And not sick as in poisoned or similarly that results from eating, but sick as in laid sick by miasma? Why does it only affect humans? Why hasn't there been a plague that affects monsters? What does magic do to protect monsters? Why doesn't it protect mages?

How come that a Monster Mage, the closest a human is to a monster, is still laid sick with the plague? The human soul might be of the same cloth as the monster soul, but a human's body isn't." Sarbor didn't manage to stop himself from pointing over to Cter. He retracted his extended finger, but it was too late. "It is different as different can be..."

Cter didn't hide that she was hurt by the doctor's point. She wasn't surprised by it though. After all, Sarbor was a doctor. "Despite spending your days up on a hill your thinking is quite grounded, Dr. Fech." Cter shook her head with a neutral smile thinning her lips. "I guess our daily views of the inside of a human differs fundamentally."

"If it is any consolation I am sorry that we could not have this conversation over tea in the gazebo up on Clinic Hill," Sarbor put out as an offering of peace while running his thumb over the orange crystal on the necklace. His shoulders had loosened a bit, and the way he shifted in his seat gave Cter the indication that he wanted to apologize.

He was too proud to do it outright though.

A fault of his, maybe, but Cter didn't have the time nor energy to pursue it. "While I know that I have become jaded towards the horrors of the plague, it is difficult to catch myself in the act." His loose shoulders shrugged. "I'm only human," he scoffed tiredly. "And magic to me is not something I want to get involved with. I recognize that you are important, Monster Mage, but I don't understand it. Magic once promised me that my parents would survive. It promised me that tomorrow they'd have the strength to smile back at me. When that promise didn't go through I promised myself instead that I'd make someone else's parent smile when magic failed them."

After an introspective blink Sarbor met Cter's eyes. "Can you blame me?" he asked. "You, the epitome of magic, and the Monster Mage poised to again promise me that magic will solve my world by changing Dr. Sallus' magic, can you blame me for not believing in magic the same way that you do?"

The Monster Mage poised to again promise Sarbor that magic would solve his world by changing Dr. Sallus' magic wasn't gonna answer that.

"For it was there when magic failed me. Where it waltzed in with its confident nose held high into the sky thinking it was the master of the world was where I saw how it differentiated the two races rather than bringing them together. For each discovery about the human soul the more we prove how different humans and monsters are physically. Each discovery for the human and monster soul being the same is a discovery that the human and monster form are different, for if the human and monster soul are the same, then the races are more different since they are supposed to be the same. For you the discoveries strengthen your beliefs, Monster Mage, but at the same time it strengthens mine as well."

Cter leaned back in her seat as the human doctor finished speaking. What was she gonna say in return? He wasn't wrong in what he said. The air of negativity which permeated his line of thinking was what had Cter concerned though. At the same time, there was no denying in how far Sarbor had come while just being focused on the human side of things.

She disagreed with him, but she understood why his thinking was what it was. Cter was still a bit miffed about how he acted about her magic. Just because he disagreed with her didn't mean that he could go around scoffing at her magic. She wasn't angry with him though as she was before the two got in the carriage. Luckily, Cter was lucid enough through her anger that she understood that Sarbor wanted to talk the same way Terri wanted at Fenkeep Castle. Neither had anyone to really talk with. Well, vent towards was probably the better word for it, but still.

If only…

"What would be needed for you to meet magic halfway?" the Monster Mage asked gently with a gentle nod towards the necklace the human doctor was caressing. More as a prompt for him to explain additionally rather than for him to defend his view. "For you to finally travel to meet your little sister again?"

That though he had to defend himself about. Sarbor had said enough for Cter to understand the real reason behind him stalling to see his little sister. If she was gonna be relentless about her disagreement with Sarbor it was gonna be about him not visiting his little sister in Jarasevo.

"Don't you suggest for a second that I don't love my little sister, Monster Mage." Each syllable Sarbor spoke dripped thickly from his tongue as he spoke with his furrow tensed enough to pull his hair down over his eyes. The necklace he clenched tightly, ignoring the sharp crevices in it. "I thought you understood last time why I had to keep working at Clinic Hill. Idyll does, as the letter she sent back told me, so don't come thinking that I've not stopped being her older brother. I know that she wants to cook something for me that will make me forget what happened to our parents, and my heart aches for that day something fierce."

Defended plenty, he did. Which was good for Cter, actually. She could leverage that.

"Then you'll come with Sund and I back to Jarasevo after I've changed Dr. Sallus' magic?" Cter unfolded her arms as the carriage began to slow down among the smaller roads inside Clinic Village. Sund's house wasn't far away. "Idyll had me promising that I'd bring you to Jarasevo Castle. She's figured out what to cook for you."

The news were a bit...conflicting to Sarbor, who's furrow loosened into a weary shake of his head. "Of course she has," he sighed against the carriage window showing the empty houses passing slowly by. Cter had made sure to mention to the driver that they would not pass the burnt-down house for obvious reasons. "Can you make promise on top of that promise for me, Monster Mage?"

The carriage stopped with wooden creaks at the seams of the carriage.

"And what would that be, doctor?"

With his eyes still deep underneath his bushy eyebrows Sarbor stood up with his doctor bag gripped in his left hand and the necklace in his right. "That whatever it is you plan to do with Dr. Sallus, make sure that you know exactly what it is you are doing." The bushy eyebrows turned over Cter's way. "Can you promise me that?"

That Cter could. "Yes."

Which seemed to be not be enough for Sarbor, yet he accepted it regardless, as his thoughts were busy settling onto the orange necklace in his hand. "So I just have to think about my little sister for your magic to work?" he asked as if he hadn't said his previous question with a turn towards the carriage door which he opened up. "Just have to imagine her voice and form to get through Sund's barrier magic?"

"Yes, and also I think it'll work better if you wear it rather than hold it."

That didn't seem to get through to the human doctor. He took a step down the carriage steps. "And it'll protect me from the miasma inside?" There he waited.

"Yes."

"As well as allow me to hurry out with the patient when I confirm the dire state he is in?"

"..."

"Dr. Sallus is already making preparations for the worst up on Clinic Hill."

"..."

"But you already figured that, didn't you, Monster Mage?"

"..."

"Didn't you–"

"Just do your job, doctor!"

Sarbor didn't react to the angry shout. He'd heard it too many times to have it startle him. "As you wish," he instead said with neutral emotion as he exited the carriage. "I'll wait for you at the house door."

"...You do that."

"We'll do our best for Sund. That I can promise in return."

"Yes."

And furthermore.

"Thank you, doctor."

For even with the most advanced magic in the world.

"Sund..."

Cter could do nothing.

"I'm so..."

Nothing at all.

"I'm so sorry."

She was only...

"Please..."

She was only human.

"Please don't die..."