"Laceration depth increasing down the arm, inverse proportional to the thickness of the flesh."

Cter heard the scratching of Sarbor's pen noting down his observations through her closed eyes. It was a confident scribbling, precise and matter-of-fact. Throughout the written lines though Cter noticed that he was writing slower than usual. She remembered what that skeleton librabrian had told her about how she could feel the soul of the writer in the text. How she could feel how the letters changed depending on the mood the human was in while writing.

"Starting from just above the left side of the chest akin to rope burn or stings from a jelly fish and deepening to scratches at the shoulder, small cuts at the upper arm, lacerations at the elbow crease, and finally deep carves into the flesh on the lower arm."

That he dictated his writing helped, even if it was uncomfortable for Cter to hear Sarbor detailing the state her left arm was in. She had faith and trust in him though due in no small part to the way he unraveled her bandage to begin inspecting. The skill of which had him removing the layers both with gentle care and speed that was pure habit. Even if they weren't bloodied he still put them to soak in the bowl of warm water that he had prepared before asking Cter to sit in the chair instead of him. The bed was too soft and bouncy. She had to sit securely, in his medical opinion.

An opinion Cter had no reason to treat other than fact.

"Primary theory of the cause is due to the fusion making physical contact and carving a Cooperative Connection into the flesh. The pattern reminds that of Cooperative Connections, albeit more abstract in nature. More detailed as well, but does not resemble the pattern of Cter's previous sleeve, despite initially during formation. Imprints of the patterns are found in Appendix C."

A second or so after dictating, Sarbor finished writing, and eased Cter's arm onto an awaiting wet towel. A few of its strands were still standing even after having been wet, which stung forth a grimace onto Cter's lips.

"Does it hurt?" Sarbor asked in response while dotting his pen into the ink well to refill. "Can you describe it, please? Faint, major? Stinging, burning, flu-like? Like touching at an open cut?"

Cter nodded. "The latter. It feels like an open wound. I recognize it from when I was little and cut my leg open on a branch while playing in the forest."

Sarbor nodded along with Cter and her retelling. "I see." His eyes glanced back at her again after noting her explanation down. "And the pain? How much does it hurt? Similarly to an open wound or more?"

"Less, actually. It's like the stinging just before you discover that you've gotten a splinter."

"Is it okay with you if I touch at it with the back of my pen?" Sarbor asked carefully. "If not then that is fine."

"I...I'd rather not that you did." She was ashamed enough that he was poking around on it. She knew why, and she appreciated that he did. Even though, with how...clinical he was about her left arm it wasn't anything that she really wanted him to do more on.

She had barely come to terms that it was on her arm, so how was she gonna be comfortable with someone else poking in it with a pen? Cter did not mean anything ill towards Sarbor specifically, she just…

"Then that is fine, Cter," Sarbor repeated while changing the question he had written down to one that Cter did not have any problems answering. "Is it okay with you if I ask you to touch at its beginning and end with the back of my pen?" He had deliberately left space to fill out in his notes which surprised Cter.

Enough so that she she did not notice Sarbor wiggling the back of his pen at her at first. "Oh," she reacted before taking the pen and touching at the top of where the lines ended at her chest and down to where it ended on the back of her hand.

"Patient's sensation of the injury concurs with ocular inspection."

"Thank you," Cter said to the human doctor while giving his pen back.

"Of course."

Sarbor then headed over to Cter's desk with an open hand beckoning her to follow. There he prepared a few pages of thick paper alongside some water and small container of crushed coal. Cter had been mighty curious when he retrieved it from his doctor's bag. She had heard that coal was used to treat stomach illnesses, but why would he want to use it for her arm? To heal it? How?

"I am going to make a few prints of your left arm," explained Sarbor to his understandably perplexed patient. "It is a technique one of my colleagues developed at Clinic Hill." His tongue outpaced him, and he was forced to shut his eyes and exhale a quivering breath. His fingers which had stretched out to display curled back into a tightened fist. His mouth grimaced.

And something faint and slight flared within him.

"Do you need a moment, Sarbor?"

He nodded without another word.

Cter understood that fully, and sat herself back down into her chair to wait. Impatiently though, as she began to immediately feel at the slight flaring that flickered like the strike of a match on the other side of a darkened field.

It was definitely an aura. No doubt about it, despite Cter still being half a stranger to her own new one. Sarbor had an aura to him. A weak, untrained one which showed all the hallmarks of being just found out by a monster and not by the human harboring it. A needle in a haystack, but glowing red hot within the stack. It was even weaker than the auras the children in Clinic Village had the first time Cter visited it. Infant-like, almost as if…

"Okay, I'm good now."

Almost as if it was born just a few months or so before...

"May I have your arm, please, Cter?"

As if it was born at Clinic Hill...

"Cter?"

"You have an aura," she replied with a quiet stare that she blinked away to look at the human doctor. "You have an aura, Sarbor." The repeat was followed with more blinking, as Cter struggled to find any more words. Sarbor had an aura! A magical potential had grown within him as an adult! It–

"Figured as much."

It didn't mean anything to him?

"I've been around enough monsters and humans with magical potential to know when one detects a new aura. More than a few ones have been found by the monster nurses taking care of the patients," he explained as if he was defending his reasoning to use a certain condiment on his food. He seemed more occupied with layering the thick papers two and two with a sprinkle of coal powder in-between than he was about his magical potential. "Priestess Frioke was the first I noticed noticing, but she hasn't said anything to me directly." After the layered papers he dipped another towel into the warm water, wringing it out so that it was merely moist. "Probably discussing it with your colleagues, if I were to hazard a guess."

Cter's tongue twisted inside her mouth, half from how baffled she was about Sarbor's reaction, and half from the warm water stinging on her arm from Sarbor's careful, yet deliberate dabs up and down her lower arm.

"Here, please." Sarbor moved the wet arm over to one double-stacked paper and gently pressed the underside of Cter's lower arm against the paper with the towel laid over. "Do you think you can hold it still there for a couple of minutes?"

Cter could, "Yes," however that wasn't really the important question to ask at that point, was it? "You don't think there's anything about the fact that you have an aura now?" She began to turn around to the human doctor digging after something in his bag, but before she could he snapped his finger towards her left arm to remind her to not move it. "Sorry," Cter replied without thinking about it. "But Sarbor," she tried again afterwards, "how come?"

With a stern click of the metal lock, Sarbor closed his doctor's bag with an intimidating air to his exhale.

And to his slight aura.

"Magic and I have always been in a bit of a disagreement, as I'm sure you're aware." He was holding back a lot, and that Cter didn't need his aura to tell. The way his thick mustache thinned to almost the thickness of a single strand was enough to make Cter crane her neck back when Sarbor turned to face her with his piercing eyes. "And as I'm even surer that you're more aware of," he glanced over to her left arm's crevices visible underneath the moist towel, "it has not really made a more benevolent case towards me lately." He shook his head. "I will ask Priestess Frioke if there is a way that she can remove it once she brings it up to me."

Cter's initial, immediate reaction was to ask why he wanted to remove it. He had been given a magical potential, an aura, and was therefor capable of magic. It struck her so wrong that Sarbor just outright dismissed the idea without any obvious thought to it. In a way she felt as if he was making a dismissal of who she was as a mage. That he did not even want to try his hand and sleeve at the idea.

"How does your arm feel?"

The thought was swiftly pushed aside, replaced by a compassion that blossomed more than the sliver of Sabor's aura that had radiated so weakly despite its clear, emotional blooming. Cter knew the reason why Sarbor wasn't on good terms with magic from before he moved to Clinic Hill, and added on top the discomfort he must have felt having an aura all of a sudden given to him by a horrifying fusion between his mentor and a Monster Mage…

"It feels fine," answered Cter solemnly. Her lips thinned with a tilt away of her head. "How does it feel for...you?" She blinked back her bright-green eyes back at the human doctor inhaling a sigh through his nose.

"I suppose you're the one with experience in that field," he admitted as the inhaled sigh flattened his mustache. With a glance to judge how the imprint of Cter's arm was doing he put one hip up on the desk and pushed his hands together. "It feels...strange," Sarbor began vaguely and really only just to say something. He then gave it some thought with his eyes closed. Cter could feel stirring in his vague aura. "It's a new sensation of me, I suppose."

That was a start.

"Sorry, it feels wrong to me to try and...feel around with it." The human doctor's brows met just above the bridge of his nose at a distinct angle. "It's too sore to me. Too close to what happened at Clinic Hill." His head shook with surrender. "I'm sorry, Cter. I can't. It's too much against who I am. Feels too much..." He looked at her arm underneath the wet towel. "Feels too much like what you are going through."

Cter's wasn't sure what to make of that.

Before she could make anything solid out of it, Sarbor concluded that the imprint was done. He gently rolled off the towel from Cter's arm and lifted it away from the double-stacked paper. The coal powder had soaked to the edges of the carved pattern on the underside of her left arm, with the moist towel helping it to clump elsewhere. With the help of a third ply of thick paper Sarbor traced the pattern more clearly with his pen onto the third sheet, setting it aside to dry once done. It was a very clear and accurate rendering of the underside of Cter's arm.

"Now for the other side," Sarbor informed as he prepared a similar stack of papers with powdered coal between. Those sheets he made wetter than the underside stack, matting it to Cter's arm like a cast. "Instead of pushing in the pattern we will instead let the powder sink in to form the pattern." Then on top he placed the moistened towel again folded to be more weighty. "It might sting a bit more."

It did, but not enough for Cter to make a fuss about. "Going through what, exactly?"

That however she did make a fuss about. Not to point fingers and call out that Sarbor was weak or anything, but more that she wanted to hear him explain. To hear someone else talk and lament about what had happened. To feel like she had some companionship in it, however momentarily it was. If he was planning on doing what it took to remove his given aura then Cter wanted to hear him talk about it so that it could help her and her arm which she did not have an option to ask how to remove.

Granted, it was assuming that it would be possible for Sarbor to have his aura removed, but the fact that he had the chance was enough.

"Going through the struggle of piecing together who you are from the two sides of you that have changed," came the answer very reluctantly. Sarbor wasn't comfortable in the slightest talking about it, but his sense of making fair overturned it. He understood why she asked and why she wanted to know more.

And that, in a way, was what he didn't want.

"I only want one side of me. Only human. I don't want the burden of having a monster side to me as well. I don't want the added complexity to my life with how to balance being a monster and being a human. Waking up to feel that I have...changed after that night put me in a panicked stupor that probably was the reason why I decided to escape with you to Monster Country and Jarasevo."

There it was again!

That Sarbor had escaped with Cter!

"All my life I've been only human. All my life I have been without magic, and focused that humanity on the study of medicine in a scientific measure rather than any healing magic. I know about it, and I know when to ask someone to apply it when medicine isn't enough. Hell, when healing magic is what's only needed then that is the correct choice for the patient and that is what I prescribe. I'm not petty. Petty kills patients."

Another thing, Cter noticed.

It was what he do.

Not what he did.

"But it was from my colleagues, and not from me. No magic from me, only medicine. Only human treatment towards humans from me. Had the doctor in our village where we grew up done the same and not leaned so much towards healing magic then our parents would still have been alive." The folded felt arms tightened. "The cure to their illness I discovered within a year under Dr. Sallus' tutelage."

Within a year? Then why… "Then why did you stay?" Cter challenged with a hard furrow which Sarbor predicted, and therefor did not react to. "Why didn't you go back to your sister? Was it because she was magi–"

"Stop." His instant, yet also-subdued demand, considering the subject matter, made it clear to Cter that he had predicted that as well. "Didn't our hug earlier tell you enough that we still care for the other?" Between his cold replies he checked on Cter's arm to gauge how much needed time was left. "I've not told her either about my aura."

A few quiet moments passed by as Cter felt rightfully ashamed over acting just like Sarbor had predicted. "I don't think she noticed," she said as an apology for her thoughtless question. "I can barely feel it, and if that's the case then there's no way that Idyll felt it." With the conversation shifting towards what she was familiar with she gave a more thoughtful question to the human doctor. "Do you want me to teach you how to sense hers?"

That one had Sarbor drumming his fingers against his folded arms. "Will she be able to feel mine too if that's the case?" There was some worry in his voice that clung to the tips of his mustache as it again thinned by his unsure frown. "From what I've gathered it is essentially like poking or similar interactions, which means that she would notice?"

Cter nodded. "Yes, she would notice. There are ways to actively feel at another aura without them noticing, but that I'm afraid that won't be able to be taught to your weak aura without adding much, much more to it. Essentially, if I'm going with something akin to your metaphor, it's touching all over the other so that they don't notice that you've done it, in a way." Still though it wasn't really accurate. "It's the best way I can try and describe it."

"I won't lie and say that your phrasing had given me incentive to be taught it, Monster Mage," chuckled Sarbor friendly. After it he exhaled as he turned his thinned mustache to face out the window. "Although I don't think that there is anything you could have said to change my mind on the situation. Once again, I love my little sister with all my heart. Only my heart though. My soul I do not, for I do not possess one. What I have inside of me isn't mine. It's an aura that's only mine because it is inside of me. Nothing about it is me though. It is a foreign object that needs removal, but I don't have the tools to do so."

"You don't think that Idyll would be happy with feeling her brother's aura? Just once?" Cter met the annoyed eyes narrowed in exasperation with her own gentle ones. She wasn't asking because she wanted to accuse, she was asking because she wanted to know more. It was a question only to make Sarbor talk, and not for Cter to judge.

He nodded his shoulder at Cter's left arm underneath the moist towel. "She's already had the soul of her best friend changed. She doesn't need that her brother's has too."

While Cter thought that Sarbor wasn't giving his sister enough trust he did have a good point.

Or perhaps Cter wasn't giving her best friend enough trust either.

"Seems to be done," said Sarbor after another minute of silence. "Less pressure from just the weight of the towel so I gave it a bit more time to make the imprint." With a careful peel he removed both the towel and the papers after turning Cter's arm half around. It felt sticky as the paper peeled off from inside her carved pattern. "You can wash your arm off in the warm water if you want while I trace the pattern. Just be careful so that you don't get startled from dipping your arm, okay?" He ended it with a smile which Cter returned.

It wasn't as much her arm that felt uncomfortable being put into the warm water as it was the numb pressure from her fingertips canceling the hot sensation like they were cut off entirely from her hand. There wasn't any residue from her fingertips soaking in the warm water which brought first a lean in from Sarbor to confirm that such was really the case to then him sharing another smile with Cter.

A silver lining in her recently imprinted cloud.

She had to breathe in deep through her nose to not flinch from the rest of her arm submerging into the warm water. The way it filled in the carved crevices was deeply unpleasant. "It's not as painful as I imagined it to be, yet it is very unsettling feeling water slosh against the inside of my arm." Scratches from a pen followed, and Cter waited for them to finish properly rather than pause briefly to switch pages or fill in more ink. "The water does not touch my arm's flesh. There is a thin layer of barricade-like magic preventing it. I can still feel the water, but it should feel much more than it does."

"Barricade magic?" Sarbor asked with his attention still on his notes.

"Barricade magic infused with healing magic." Yes, that was it. The reason why it did not heal and did not deteriorate further. Why it was as if frozen in time. A fresh wound forever fresh. "That's the reason why it's not changing." The pen scratches changed back from many small, rapid ones to long, deliberate strokes. "Thank you."

Cter concluded to herself that she had given her thoughtless question enough rest and distance to bring it up again, even if it was apropos nothing. "Why did you stay at Clinic Hill, Sarbor? If you found the cure within a year of working under Dr. Sallus?"

"I found a cure to the symptom that killed our parents," corrected Sarbor while collecting his traced patterns into a folder. "What really killed them I've not yet found a cure for though." His eyes moved down to Cter's arm soaking in the warm water. "I've only found more symptoms."

His hand touched his chest.

"Due to the over-usage of magic."