The training area was quiet, with only a few long, languid strokes of dust swept by the tired wind from the opened half vetting towards the landscape of Jarasevo. Four purple-colored figures stretched in unison with the languid wind, like brooms at a standstill. Brooms stood frozen both from stating what had to be done.

"N...No..."

And even more so, from hearing what had to be done.

"How would you even go about using a...a human as a catalyst?" The question was stated through a shocked gasp by the leftmost of the three brooms stood frozen from hearing. On the sharp hand that cut even sharper through the air at an angle, the silver rings clicked together as the hand's fingers curled into a hard fist that tried, but failed to contain the shock that gripped tightly at the furrowed grimace curling the rose-flushed cheeks pushed aside by a teeth-baring grin. "It..."

Kurant wanted to deny what she had heard. So much so that she shattered her frozen posture by throwing her braced knee forwards, shattering too the languid silence with a loud scrape of her boot against the sand.

Not much more though, as the calm, collective hand of Kry's was placed heavily on her shaking shoulder. His aura enveloped hers.

It was just as shocked.

"You suggested it..." she said to the taller, darker-skinned Monster Mage. "Why?" she searched on his face for an answer, as neither his words nor his aura dared give any. "Why would you think like that, Kry? Why would you suggest that Cter would...use...Sund? If not by how it sounds so...wrong, think about her! Think about Cter, and how it would be for her to use another human's soul to fuel hers."

"She's already–"

"No!" Kurant denied immediately with her entire body. She snapped back her shoulder, yanking it out of Kry's soft grip. "No she's never done it before, Kry. I know what you're thinking of. It's different. It's different from every single time she has used magic from another mage. It's completely different from when she conjured up that image of Terri Fyed. She wasn't using his own magic, she was using the magic in his sleeve. This is different! It was different when we gave her more magic to use during Crystal Day. That was different too!" The weight on the repeated words had Kurant's boots sinking further down into the sand. "Sund's soul had its own magic. It was different. It almost took her over once already!"

Dark spots appeared between the quivering boots deep in the training sand.

"I'm scared." Kurant leaned both the weight of her aura and her body against Kry. "I'm so sorry, Cter," she coughed just loud enough that Cter would hear. "I'm so scared that we'll lose you too. I...I thought that you'd managed to alleviate yourself of their presence once Idyll managed to get through to you, but now..." Her gulp was as grainy as the sand below. "Now you're thinking of calling upon that presence again, and all the fear that I felt is..."

"It's flooding back," Cter finished for Kurant with a sense of shame washing over her. Yet again it wasn't just her that suffered from it all. Neither of the four were there out of their own free will, but out of the obligation to prevent the fusion from happening ever again. To control what has been done, and to make sure it was the only time.

The only, horrific time.

"You have to do it though," Kurant gritted through an angry huff. "You have to make your new soul your own, Cter." The anger was at herself. "I'll be here for you." She let Kry stand her up on her own two legs. "I'll be here for you like how I wasn't for Sund." On her own leg void of magic. "I'll be here for him too." And on her own leg cursed by magic. "For the both of you, if needed."

Cter smiled at her friend.

"Sund would have wanted this," Kurant continued while tensing her sleeved arm. "He always said that his own magic was inspired by me." With still-watered eyes she watched her pulsating lines as they breathed calmer than she did. "That while I cannot improve my magic I've focused on diversifying how I can apply it, and from that Sund found how he managed to discover his own magic. I can't let fear of what happened cloud my ability to remedy what it has done!" A strong, purple haze radiated from Kurant's sleeved arm and throughout her body. Her boots deep inside the sand moved as if in water as she swept her leg aside for a securer stance.

Waves and ripples moved out from the purple-magic-infused sand, washing ashore at the rim of the training area like curious, exploratory reaches of water up on a beach. With a final, long exhale the purple haze receded from Kurant's body and sleeve, and the watery nature her magic had induced disappeared from the sand, collapsing the waves into small, disorganized mounds around her.

"I cannot forlorn myself when people are in need of me," she spoke, calmly. "I'm Kurant, the Second Monster Mage!" Her declaration wasn't secure, yet it spoke even more of her feeling secure than any calmer statement could. Her voice was filled with pride and anger. Pride in who she was, and anger that she had betrayed who she was. Not for herself, but for Cter, and for Sund. "I can still save you, Cter, and that I'm not gonna let slip between my fingers."

The sand she had control over. The sand that would slip between her fingers she could handle.

She could.

But could he?

With a slow blink, Cter moved over to Kry, who stretched his sleeved arm across his chest. "Whenever you are," he replied to the question that didn't have to be asked. "I've done the crying that I needed to do, and am ready to be the shoulder that you need." Kry angled his head over to Kurant with a gentle nod. "The royal you." A nod that he deepened into a bow. "Those of you that are around me."

The warmth of his aura melted the frozen four as he let his love for those he so deeply cared about radiate without any hindrance to it. No closed curtains in the name of decency or stoicism. His soul was for his friends, opened and naked.

Finally, Frioke, who had taken a few steps back to make sure that the two Monster Mages at her sides had enough room for both their limbs and for their souls and auras. Her ears had folded worryingly at Cter's realization that she needed to use Sund to be able to cast magic again. Those ears hadn't come back up fully, but they were no longer hard, pushed-down flat against her head. While not fully up, she was relaxed enough to let them sway with the languid wind that again painted a long stroke of cloudy sand across the training area.

She was there, yet she would not do anything. What was about to be undertaken was not within her abilities to contribute to. If anything, her presence meant that Kry and Kurant had to worry about her. Despite that, she still contributed an important part to the situation. Her experience and knowledge were as much needed as they had ever been before in her life.

She was a Monster Priestess among Monster Mages. They had the magic, but she had the spirituality. She might not have known the Monster Mage's magic better than themselves had, but she was the one that knew it the second best. Frioke was the one that knew Sund's magic the best in his absence.

If Cter was going to use his magic for herself, then she needed Frioke.

"I'm here for you as well, Cter." The blue, long ears bent forwards with Frioke's bow to show her trust in Cter's abilities. "Whenever you're ready, Monster Mage."

"Monster Mages," Cter corrected, making sure not to look at her arm so that it was perfectly clear that she meant Kry and Kurant. "Monster Mages," she then repeated into the bandages on her left arm.

For if she was going to use Sund she needed to consider him alive. Consider him as something that he wasn't. A lie. A white lie. A white lie meant with nothing but good intentions for a better future that's safe from the dark undercurrent that would set the world rumbling should the truth be revealed.

Cter scoffed a smile.

In all her career she had done nothing but break and reform the Cooperative Connection. Dug deep and reversed it, resurfaced and reversed it again.

As she stood in the middle of the training area where the languid wind tugged her loosened bandage into a thin flag of stained white that grew longer and longer the more she unraveled her arm, she could not help but chuckle at the similarities. Her own Prince Soulay was in her left arm, carved by a being of unfathomable power. From it she was gonna reinvent the Cooperative Connection to make her new soul her own. To return her magic to her.

"For that I need your help, Sund," she said gently to her left arm as the last of her bandage was carried away by the wind into a weapon rack where it bundled around a training spear. The gentle request was happy as well, dragging a growing smile on Cter as long seconds passed, wrapping the bandage tighter around an arm of wood rather than one of flesh and magic.

Cter allowed herself some moments to indulge in the notion of considering Sund as alive, even if it was just for a few moments. It was necessary too, and not just for indulgence's sake. If she was to use what was left of Sund inside her arm then she had to consider those memories, his soul, as lingering the same as a monster's soul would. In a way it meant that she had to consider him more monster than he had ever been in life. Not to use, but to cooperate with. To make a bond between their souls.

As she let the magical presence in her arm slowly leak out into her aura, she caught glimpses of Bonny as well within the amalgamated mess of mixed memories. It called back to when she woke up in her own bed yet did not know that it was hers. The icy, void-like horror of being tugged between three selves within her soul had Cter grimacing with a harsh grit to her teeth. Her entire body tensed, as if dipping her toe into chilling water after having been thrown into it without warning before.

Slowly though, she submerged more of her into the chilling water of her fears by letting more and more of her carved lines assert themselves over her. To control it she had to first know what it was that she would have to control exactly. Her scuffle against the fusion might have infused her with its magic, but since she gave up and let it completely overtake her there wasn't anything she could recall from that moment. All that she remembered was a sense of not being. Of being shunted back in her mind and soul. Of a pressure that she had never experienced before replacing what she was with what the fusion was.

Had Sarbor not cut its head off it…

"Focus!" shouted Kry sternly after sensing that Cter was slipping. "You're not back then, Cter! You're here! You're in Jarasevo Castle!"

Yes…

Yes, she was.

Those were only memories. Only reverberations with the same tone as what she was summoning from her carved lines.

She went deeper.

More and more of Bonny and Sund surrounded Cter. Flashes of lives that weren't hers, of scenes that she was not present in, but were about her. She saw Sund talking to Kry the day after Cter was taken to the dungeon at Jarasevo Castle. She felt Sund's lips move as he discussed the matter that was her and what she had done, brushing aside his matted hair from hanging deeply over his eyes. It tugged at her the same that it had done when she didn't know what it was she saw out her tower window, away from who she was and back into the mix of memories that had caused her such anguish.

Another tug brought her towards Bonny's memories talking to Kurant while fixing her knee brace followed, with Cter hearing the monster doctor express concern over the knee brace he was fixing. That worry was like a river, shunting Cter further away from herself towards Bonny reading her message she sent up Clinic Hill. Finally, the night when he and Sund–

"Fight it, Cter!" cried Kurant while radiating her aura for Cter to feel. To remind and to keep steady. "You're here with us!" To drag back to who she was, and where she belonged.

Cter heard Kurant's plea, yet she still saw through Sund's eyes the human family that huddled inside the corner of the master bedroom of their house. She felt through him the shock and disgust that sped through him like an arrow of pure panic, flaring up from his soul. How he, through pure reflex, let his sleeve light up in a blaze that he threw in front of him against the horrific sight of bodies in such an abhorrent state.

As Cter opened her own eyes she saw her left arm ignited in the same crackling fire that had consumed the house the day before Sund succumbed to the plague. It rose from the deep carvings like spread-out coals, combining into a continuous flame as she moved her arm around to inspect it.

There were no cheers or jubilation from her friends though.

For they saw immediately that it wasn't what Cter wanted. That it wasn't was she had sought.

"At least we know that the theory is sound," offered Kry. "But you're not in control of it, are you, Cter?"

She shook her head, her combined braid slipping off her shoulder and whipping at her other in the process.

"That flame," said Kurant with a point with her ringed index finger. "It's an unstable flame. It's crackling, and the color is red and hurried." The ring stopped her finger from curling back fully. "It's from Clinic Village isn't it?" She dreaded the answer even though she knew it fully. "From when he burned the house?"

Cter's confirming nod was short. After it she swept her arm in front of her horizontally, bathing her face behind the long licks of the wood-like flame that sent crackles and sparks bouncing against her nose and cheeks. The flames merged into one in the sweeping motion, but quickly separated once the motion had reduced to gently lifting and falling from Cter's breathing. She peered with focus between the tips of the flames, keeping balance to fuel Sund's desperate flame while not letting it spread any further or erupt more violently.

"How does it feel to you?" she asked her colleagues, all three of them. "How does this magic feel? How much of Sund's is it?" While she did ask all three, who she looked at was Frioke. "Is there a part of...me in it?"

The Monster Priestess' nose twitched after a few heavy blinks that transitioned into quiet contemplation with her eyes shut close. Her mouth twitched as well, her lips curling to bare the unsure teeth that she failed to hide.

"I wish I could tell you that it wasn't Sund's, Cter," Frioke finally spoke through a defeated sigh. "However, my soul tells me the complete opposite. It tells me that it is Sund's magic, fully and whole. All that you have managed is to have your left arm relive a memory of its own, but not called upon it yourself. A prod that resulted in a rattle, that's all. I can tell." Her head retreated downwards, sunk into shadow. "I can tell..." Before her ears could fall down she huffed against the sense of dread. "I can tell that it isn't from Sund. It's his magic, but it's not from him. It's a mere...afterglow, of sorts."

The three Monster Mages gave the Monster Priestess time to collect her words. Whether it was the crackling of the desperate magical flame or the crackle from how hard Frioke was straining her mind and soul to explain properly no one could discern.

Only concern.

"It is...as if his fallen down was used to grow the flowers at Time's Square, but the flowers weren't tended by him. As if the flowers were him, spoke like him, or thought like him. As if the flowers had grown from the soil that had been soaked by Sund's magical dust, as if his body had been that of a monster's. Been influenced by his soul like a child learning from a parent."

Frioke's expression soured at the vile conclusion she was about to tell. It dimmed her aura, as if her hope was drained by the very thought of it. "The flame that burns from your carved lines are those flowers, Cter. They are only Sund's in the sense that it is the only influence they can feed from, but not from him directly. His fallen down is too far below, too much deeper than the roots can nourish from. You have to go deeper, Cter. You have only raked the top layer."

Only breached below the surface.

Only one foot, if not just one toe below the water.

She had to go deeper.

To be fully submerged and float below the surface like she had done at her Hjearta village lake when she needed to think and to be alone. She could not be just below the surface though. She needed to let herself sink to the very bottom into the dark depths where Sund was. However, she could not sink on her own. There was no weight between her and her new soul for her to get deeper with.

What she needed was Bonny.

"Don't interfere," she told her colleagues to solidify her decision. The desperate flames bent as she spoke. "I'm going where you can't follow."

"I'll pull you back if needed," promised Kurant.

"Don't," returned Cter with a stern shake.

But Kurant held her ground. "I'm not losing you again. That I've repeated plenty already. If this doesn't work then we try something else." She stated it clearly. "So make it work. We'll be here. We might not be able to follow you where you're going, but take as much of us as you can with you."

Kry, Kurant, and Frioke enveloped their auras around Cter, weaving their three hues into a shimmering brilliance that settled like a blanket over her. Gently, ever so, Cter let her colleagues touch at her soul. She let them in. She let the right ones in to help find their missing friend.

"And when you meet Sund, say goodbye to him from us, please."

Cter promised.

And shut her eyes.