The desperate flames on the Monster Mage's left arm were snuffed out like a blown-out candle. The languid wind that bent the flames was not the reason why though, as they were snuffed out in her left arm's carvings. The resulting snuff was akin to the flames peeling off the arm, fluttering in the languid wind for a few seconds before dissipating into naught but invisible, hot air.

With a groan, the thin eyebrows hardened into a sharp angle which echoed into the flatly held arm across Cter's torso. Her white-tipped fingers tensed last, balling tightly into a fist that summoned a focused hum from the huffed grin. Like a Whimsun about to make a public speech, the magic that began to grow on Cter's arm like slow moss was uncertain and thinly veiled.

A strange, green glow began to form like dense mist on a cold morning lake. Not a green that should have been. It was a changed green. A changed magic. A changed healing magic. It didn't flow like gentle honey around Cter's arm like normal healing magic would have, it was too unclear in its formation to take on any distinguished properties that would give a hint as to what it was, if not healing magic.

However though, while it did not take on any distinguished properties, it took on a strange kind of specificity. There was purpose to the green magic. A very specific purpose that gave it an air of what it was even if it itself did not make it.

Its presence is what gave a hint as to what it was. That it was there, and not how it was there as. The light before a sunrise, yet with no sun in sight.

From the flesh-carved walls of Cter's arm the green magic seeped like heavy smoke, first filling up the carvings before reaching above and exploring across the surface of her arm. As they connected with the other clouds of green magic, they began to rise like water in a container, filling up into a thick layer that hid Cter's arm with only the white glow of her carvings peeking through the dense clouds of green magic.

Cter let herself succumb to Bonny's changed healing magic, letting it into her soul without much effort or coaxing. Its purpose was to preserve a human's soul, after all. Cter was to use it differently though, as was her bread and butter. She might have not been accustomed to her new soul, but she was accustomed to the feeling of being overtaken by a monster's memories. Of her human soul drinking greedily from the magical presence she let it consume.

She kept a distance to it by letting the combined aura of her colleagues be a nuisance in the background. A white noise in the bunny-like ears that Bonny's memories dressed Cter's in. Vague purple dots of Kry, Kurant, and Frioke's silhouettes in the short-stood eyes that looked over a quivering white nose up at the Monster Mage that was changing the Monster Doctor's magic.

Cter watched herself through Bonny eyes and soul as she changed his magic to try and save Sund's hovering soul that faithful night at Clinic Hill. She felt the hope that Bonny had as he stumbled from his changed magic getting a grip on how his body and balance was. How it was for a monster to be reborn. How much it rattled Bonny's mind with thoughts of how he should document the feeling. To document how a monster felt after their soul had been changed to facilitate new magic. It was possible, and thus Bonny had to make sure to document it for future study.

It was for only a short moment that those thoughts rattled for Bonny's full attention, as almost immediately after, due to Cter's protective shell around him failing due to her enormous effort in changing Bonny's magic, Bonny was reminded why he had changed his magic. He did not have time to document his own feelings, as there was someone else who could not control his own feelings that radiated with the fury of a raging firestorm right next to him. His magic was changed to help Sund's, and that was what he needed to do!

Any thoughts he had for himself disappeared as he became determined to save the Monster Mage who's body had failed him. To preserve his soul and to give him a new body in the future. All of Bonny's thoughts were of Sund.

Just what Cter needed.

It was different for Cter to still be aware of herself while exploring a monster's memory. Like another melody underneath the song of thoughts, watching and producing the white noise present, reminding her that it's not real. If she wanted she could have stepped out of Bonny and observed him from outside yet still experiencing his presence. Had she done that though she would have risked not getting closer to Sund. She needed to bide her time, to wait inside Bonny's memories until the perfect moment to make the leap into Sund's.

In a way it was as if she was a child playing in the forest around her Hjearta village again, hiding within the bushes or among the trees to try and blend in while playing hide and seek.

Her moment came when Bonny reached out for the hovering soul with his hand, his own filled with such hope and care. Opened up for the Monster Mage's soul to invite and to–

"Cter!"

She threw her eyes open as she staggered backwards a few uneven steps before succumbing to her loss of balance and collapsing down on her back. The flat landing interrupted her gasping breaths, forcing dry coughs to inhale from the dusty cloud her landing created. Cter writhed into a curled cocoon, clutching hard at her chest as her coughs began to taste of copper.

Hurried shadows descended worryingly over her. "You recoiled violently." A sturdy hand gripped at her shoulder to try and let her know that she was safe. "What happened?" Kry waited patiently for Cter to catch her breath, vigilantly supporting her shocked aura with his to ease her. His was joined with Frioke and Kurant's too who's shorter legs and injured knee respectively carried them slower over to their collapsed friend.

"I'm fine," said Cter after almost a minute of trying to catch her breath. "I'm fine..." There wasn't any way that she could have said it without raising more worry though. She didn't blame them. The jolt that had surged through her soul and aura was like a strike of thunder from a clear sky. "Water." She was still shaking from the shock of it, her body quivering everywhere except underneath Kry's heavy and secure hand.

"Here," said Kurant with a strained voice as she moved a metal jug with stasis magic from the edge of the training area over to the middle where Cter laid. "Drink carefully though so that you don't choke." She gently surrounded Cter with the purple magic so that Kry could sit her up straight. "Are you feeling well?"

Cter drank greedily until her lack of breath forced her to stop. Each cycle gave her more and more color back to her cheeks, which she turned towards Frioke. "What color are they?" she forced out in-between gasps of air. "What color is my skin?"

The Monster Priestess' head jerked back, causing her long ears to whip with the sudden motion. "T-They're flush. Y-Your cheeks, they're f-flush," she answered with shock in her voice. "W-What do you mean?" The shock turned to concern, and something clicked within Frioke. She leaned forwards from her jerked-back posture. "Did you think they would be yellow-tinted?" Frioke asked low to show that she understood why Cter was afraid. "What happened?"

A relieved breath that risked toppling the entire castle rolled out of Cter, sinking her shoulders down below her armpits. "Singe my soul..." she said with a pained sob that was followed with a few thick drops that carved down her sand-covered cheeks flush with a deep pink. Her watery eyes snapped down towards her left arm, which she flinched at with a small yelp.

"Cter," Kry said after a snap of his sleeved-covered fingers that summoned a spark of fire which stole Cter's attention. "You're back in the training area. You're with us again." He again let his aura lay heavy on top of hers like a warm blanket. "Tell us what happened. What did you experience? Did you find Sund?" He wanted to do more, but also knew that it would easily become doing too much. He had to give Cter time, so that's what he did.

It took another minute, but eventually Cter managed to say something. "No," she answered with a distant shake to her head. She looked to the three pair of eyes that blinked while waiting. Her first attempt at explaining failed, resulting in only a mix of syllables tripping off her tongue. With another reassuring embrace on her aura from her friends though she found strength to fight through the shock that still had her shaking like an aspen leaf in the wind. She inhaled deeply.

"He found me."

And exhaled.

Quietly, the exhale joined the languid wind as the three that stood around Cter exchanged heavy glances between them.

"He found you?" Kurant asked with a furrowed shake of her head. "How do you mean?" Her eyes moved down towards Cter's left arm. "Is he..."

"He's still there?" finished Kry with a quick inhale through his nose, quick enough to have his glasses bounce. "In your arm?"

Without a word, Cter stood up on her own. Her eyes were closed, shut tight, and her lips were thinned into a focused grimace. Her friends stepped back to give her space.

And just in time.

From the carvings inside Cter's left arm shot up thick thistles of white magic, forming into angular and sharp swords that vied for space within the fleshy pots which from they grew. Cter's entire arm shook from the sudden sprouting that echoed a loud, muffled chime. She gripped at her shoulder, barely stable enough to be standing.

Kry and Kurant found themselves pushed aside by Frioke bursting through between them. "That's barricade magic!" she exclaimed with her brought-with notes landing underneath her lunge forward with a thud. "It's Sund's!" Her smile faded from her eyes and ears a second later, as the white spikes which had stopped at Cter's elbow began to reach higher up her arm. "Or..." slipped off Frioke's tongue as a grim expression took her over. "No...no it's not Sund's! Where did his go? This is...wrong! This isn't Sund anymore! He disappeared! Where did he go! Where is–"

"Stop!" the Fourth Monster Mage shouted at the spikes that began to widen the carvings on her arm due to how densely packed they had become. Like a flower pot overflowing with flowers, petals of white broke off and embedded themselves into the sand like small spears. Before they even touched they had begun to dissipate, fading away with trails of dust that blended with invisibly with the sun-lit sand. "You promised!"

There was anger in her voice.

"You promised me!"

An ire directed with a furious glare down at Cter's left arm blossoming with a shimmering white.

"I gave you a chance to say your proper goodbye!"

A furious glare which itself was shimmering.

"I trusted you!"

Through the welling tears that assimilated into the shimmering white after being shaken off.

"How dare you!"

Cter's anger was slicked with poison, whipping thicker than her tears were. Betrayal hung just as thick as her anger did in the air, suffocating her friends that could do naught but watch. Kry and Kurant combined their auras into a protective shell that they surrounded around Frioke and themselves against the raging roar of emotion that began to shine from Cter.

Like a second sun.

"Is that..." dripped from Frioke's mouth as her ears fell down with a splat against the back of her head. "No… No, it can't be..."

But it was.

"Twice now..."

A deep red colored the agitated dust that still lingered in the air. A brilliant red, like the second sun that it shone like was in its last moments of setting.

"Cter… Not again..."

Its last moments of falling.

"Your soul..."

Radiating from within her chest like that of furnace-heated coal, a deep red pulsated slowly in contrast to the violent shaking that shed more and more white-colored pieces off and down into the sand. The spike shapes were no longer, replaced by formless shapes instead. As they landed, they did not blend with the dust no more. As they landed they were like soft honey, viscous, yet still liquid. A white, thick liquid that resembled both flesh and dust. What was left on Cter's arm poured slowly upwards it, reaching higher and higher, closer and closer to her shoulder.

"No!" she raged against the formless white. "You're not him!" Streaks of white blobs burrowed into the sand as she threw her left arm down at an angle. "You're not Sund! You lied!"

But then where was he?

Cter had felt him! She had felt him inside Bonny's memories! As he pierced into Bonny's soul inside Bonny's memories she felt him do the same in hers! It was faint, as if she was misremembering it, yet she was confident in that it was him! He promised he would help! He promised he would help Cter! He just wanted to say goodbye to the others! That's all he wanted!

"That's all you lied!"

It was the fusion that spoke! It was its presence which Cter had subdued that took the chance to finish what it had been interrupted in. Its last will, its last memories, were to bring Cter's soul inside its own. The confusion that she was assaulted with from her left arm was the same as it had when it was formed. She had done as she did at Clinic Hill when she hurt it, and silenced the confusion.

She had not subdued it though…

It was still there, in her arm, dormant. Biding its own time for when it could flare up again. Had it heard? Had it sensed through Cter's aura what had transpired in the days since she woke up not knowing that it was her own bed that she had woken up in?

"But I killed you!" Cter cried desperately as the harsh white slicked up her left arm more and more, consuming. "I gave up so that Sarbor could end you!" Her tearful eyes looked with anguish at her three colleagues stood with their auras steeled defensively against the radiating magic from the fusion inside her arm. She took a step back, away from them, but in doing so only took a step closer to Jarasevo. There was nowhere she could go.

She didn't want to consider it.

"You were dead..."

She wanted to mourn!

"You took them away from us!"

She wanted to grief for the friend she had lost!

"You used them!"

She wanted it all to be behind her…

"You used me..."

And not still with her.

"You'll use..."

All of them.

It would use all of them if Cter let it.

Kry.

Kurant.

Frioke.

Toriel.

Asgore.

Sir Gerson.

Barbeqa.

And Idyll…

"Idyll."

Her name…

It was...strong.

It resonated within Cter. Within the deep red that shone from within her. The same it had done when the memories of the fusion assaulted her mind in her room. It was Idyll that had helped Cter! It was her that had brought Cter back and…

"No..."

She looked down.

"It wasn't Idyll."

At the orange glimmer from within her chest that glowed brighter and brighter.

"It wasn't her."

At her red soul she struggled to keep within her.

"It was you..."

Combined with yellow.

"It was you!"

Combined with the yellow that was Sund's soul.

It wasn't Idyll that saved Cter from not seeing what was outside her window! It was Sund! It was him that saved Cter! But how? From Idyll? Her name? Her presence?

No.

Because of his love.

That's why Cter couldn't cast any of her magic! That was why her soul was different, yet the same! She had Sund's soul inside of hers, and not in her arm! What she tried to find within her arm was the fusion's half that had absorbed Sund. It wasn't him!

It all made sense! It all became clear and–

"Aaargh!"

Cter fell down on one knee with her right arm digging deep into her flesh on her shoulder. Her fingers had begun to sink deeper due to the fusion reaching higher and higher up her arm! The strange pressure that had been inside her fingertips was throughout her entire left arm. Its shape had begun to loosen, with her nails drowning inside the mud-like white.

With a turn of her head that had her combined braid whipping in the air, Cter faced down towards the radiating orange hovering just inside her robe. "You loved her, Sund!" she shouted down into her combined soul. "You loved Idyll!" Anything to bring Sund essence more powerful. To remind it as best as she could! "Help me save her! I need you! If not the fusion will consume us all!" She tilted her head up to warn her friends. "Don't come close!"

As if they even dared to take a single step.

Frozen in fear the three stood there, magic ablaze the fiercest Cter had ever seen them wield, yet with such grim looks on their faces that told of their unmeasured fear that solidified them to the floor.

"Don't lose yourself, Cter!"

No, not fear.

"Remember us!"

Love.

"Use us!"

The same love that bubbled within her soul from Sund. From outside, and inside, Cter was surrounded by the love from her friends.

But it was not the love that was needed. It was not the love which would fight back against the fusion that had begun to cress her shoulder's hill. It was another love that was needed. A love that wanted to go further.

"F-Find Idy–"

No! No, that wouldn't be in time. It would take too much time to fetch her! She was too far away.

Too far away…

No, no she wasn't.

Not in any sense that Sund would realize in the state that he was.

Maybe...maybe if Cter retraced back to when her soul almost absorbed Idyll? Back to when her soul so greedily inhaled all that was Idyll? Sund, if he even could, was only able to feel through Cter's aura, just as the fusion did in her arm, since he was inside of Cter's soul. His vague presence had flared up enough for Cter to pick him out from her soul. Like tasting that one secret ingredient added after knowing that it was there.

She had to trick him. She had to pretend to be Idyll so that she could use him.

"I'm so sorry, Sund."

For everything.

It didn't take long for his presence to swell with warmth after Cter surrounded his presence within her soul with what she could remember of Idyll's magic. The memories of the Monster Chef's childhood Cter let flow like streams of melted water during early spring, washing by rapid and deep. More so, she let the memories of Idyll sitting on the castle rooftop hang for longer, focusing in on how her feathers and hair glittered in the setting sun behind her.

How her uneven smile pushed up her cheeks underneath her eyes, curving them so smoothly and lively. With each detail Cter focused in on her feeling Sund's presence expand and expand like boiling inside a pot. She kept the lid on, holding it down and containing it as she needed it to be released with enough power to be able to stand against the fusion's encroaching presence up her arm.

She just needed a little bit more. A spark that was enough to let Sund loose against the fusion. Just one more thing…

"She loved you too."

To fill him with determination!

Within just a brief second, the orange-tinted sand was blown away to be replaced with a whirl of yellow-tinted rage that whipped through the training area like a storm of deadly shards. Kry and Kurant both summoned a combined wall of flame to protect themselves, resulting in a symphony of sizzles as the speedy grains of sands evaporated into rolling puffs of smoke.

The bright yellow speared up into Cter's whitening shoulder, leaving only her own red glow pulsating for a moment before it began receeding. She felt reinvigorated, as if it was the first time she had felt a connection with her soul. Like being able to breathe properly after a nasty hay fever, Cter dragged a refreshing gasp that filled her body with awareness that she only then realized that she was missing.

All of her body.

Except her left arm and shoulder.

Sund's presence stood against the creeping vines of the fusion like a bright candle on top of a candlestick, burning brightly enough to have the flesh-like white begin to drip down Cter's left arm and drop off into the disturbed sand below. She gripped with her right hand at the base of her neck, just behind where Sund glowed yellow on her shoulder. Through her right hand she focused her aura like fire on the end of a torch to help melt the fusion's presence.

With Sund as the monster, through magic, and with Cter as the human, through physical contact, the two Monster Mages connected a Cooperative Connection that echoed throughout Jarasevo castle like a deafening snap, only to retreat into a rim of brilliant-colored magic at the edge of where the fusion had reached up Cter's shoulder. A deafening quiet followed as the whirlwind of dust stopped, fluttering down like colored snow around Cter as she inhaled deeply with her eyes closed to have her full attention be with Sund. She tightened her fingers just behind Sund, pushing his presence against the fusion's. He was ready.

His last service to his friends.

"Together."

With all of her magic and strength, Cter pushed her hand against the fusion on her shoulder, forcing Sund's presence into it. Her left arm convulsed violently, thrashing around with droplets of the fusion's white flesh raining down around her.

But it wasn't enough.

"Together!" Cter shouted, rallying her three colleagues to help. "Help us!"

She didn't have to ask twice.

Cter added Kry, Kurant, and Frioke's magic to hers as theirs poured into her aura, pushing theirs alongside Sund's into her left shoulder.

Which began to peel.

Peel like nothing else Cter had ever seen before. A solid liquid that bent like rolled parchment down her arm with a bright-yellow glow carving the way as a bracelet of magic. The bent, writhing flesh of the fusion weighed Cter down, forcing her down into a kneel again with her left hand bracing against the sandy floor. The fusion folded down as a puddle around her hand, like flowing flesh and dust at the same time. Perturbed ripples had shadows forming and unforming as they spread out from her wrist.

And then, blood.

Blood from the exposed carvings on her arm that had been peeled away with the fusion began to slither down her arm into the puddle of white, staining it with swirls of sanguine that followed the shadowy ripples out into the white puddle. Among the long strokes of blood down the carvings, Cter noticed a familiar yellow glow.

A brilliant yellow, no longer harsh and bright.

"Sund?"

Was he stuck? Did the magical lines on her arm absorb him? Was that why he couldn't go further into her hand?

Or did he…

"You did!"

Cter put her weight, both her physical and magical, down into the puddle. Blood spurted from her left arm, painting the white puddle even more bloodied. More bloodied than it had been at Clinic Hill.

This time it would be for good though!

Through Sund, Cter let the fusion's puddle be encased into a thick layer of barricade magic. The fusion's white shimmered with the barricade's, yet could not touch it. It was trapped, held captive within the barricade magic that slowly began to shift into a shimmering pink. The white of the fusion through the barricade magic shifted to become more distorted and angular, and its panicked writhing inverted and morphed its refraction through the solidifying barricade magic.

Into a magical, crystalline structure.

With one last push.

"Goodbye, Sund."

Sund's barricade magic.

"From all of us."

And Cter's crystal magic.

"Together!"

Shattered into a rainbow of colors that reflected differently in the bouquet of sharp, vicious spikes that stretched high and wide like stalagmites in the most ancient of caves. The barricade magic squeezed the puddle together while the crystal magic tore it from inside. Combined, the magic stretched the White Flesh thinner than a ghost monster, pierced through and clasped.

The intent was for it to suffer.

For its last moments to be reminded of the pain it had caused. Of what it had taken and twisted into something that never should have been. It had taken Sund and Bonny and made something horrid with them. Poison from benign. Death from alive. The most inverse of Cooperative Connection!

So it was fitting that Cter was the one that brought it to be.

"Singe your soul!"

And even more fitting that she was the one that brought it to end.

With one last powerful burst of crystal magic, the barricade magic was pierced by incandescent lances that held aloft pieces of writing, White Flesh. Inside the lustrous, angled impact of her crystal magic Cter stood up. Her left arm quivered with pain and strained magical effort. Blood poured from her tiredly curled fingers with a quick percussion on the crystal floor below as she stared intently at one of the pieces of White Flesh writhing weaker and weaker.

Until it finally stopped.

And dispersed into the cloud of dust that had filled the training area. A cloud of dust, both sand and magical, as well as shards of barricade and crystal magic, was carried by the languid wind out for all of Jarasevo to see. The laughs from far below stopped as the cloud rose to let everyone know.

That the fusion was finally dead.

And Sund with it.

Cter looked down at her bloodied left arm. It was a struggle to keep focus as her head felt lighter than it had ever been. Exhaustion swept through her like a compelling blanket coaxing her to fall asleep. She stumbled, fumbling for grip on one of the crystal lances that jutted out from the sand next to her. Only her right hand found grip, with her left one only slipping off due to the slick blood. Underneath the slicked-off layer of red did she see white. Not only on her fingertips, but down another set of knuckles.

"That's not..." were the only words she could mutter before the faint flashed over her. She again looked down on her carved left arm, smiling. "Couldn't have helped me with that too before you..."

Darkness took her over, finally collapsing her from exhaustion. She landed softly into the arms of her colleagues, who caught her with stasis magic just in time as they sprinted over towards her. She blinked her eyes open for a moment longer to tell them that.

"He said goodbye to you too..."

Before disappearing into dark.

But not a strange type of dark.