"It is rather beautiful from up here."

Cter flinched as she exited the hatch leading up towards the castle rooftop. She had always been the first one up on the rooftop during Idyll and hers sparse dinners together among the weaves of slates protecting with their overlaid ceramic plating.

"How long will it be there?"

"I'm guessing a day or so," answered the Monster Mage as she lifted herself up out of the rooftop hatch to then close it so that she could walk on it and not risk slipping on the slates. She was facing the opposite way than usual, away from the castle rather than facing inwards towards the Royal Garden, so there was no doubt as to what it was that she talking about.

"Then I'll enjoy how it looks today then."

The fact that Idyll had already set up the makeshift chairs and the stewing pot between the chairs all on her own without the help of stasis magic was impressive. "I figured I'd prioritize making a spectacle of it rather than something more permanent." It was her job though, to be fair. And Idyll did not need any magic to be strong, much less the strength magic she had before her black feathers happened. "It's what he deserved."

"Not to poke at something as sore as Sund's legacy," Idyll was reluctant to mention while she inhaled through gritted teeth, "but I know you, Cter." As the wind streaked past the raven-colored feathers on the Monster Chef's face her eye became visible through the dark, wave-abundant lake that was her cheek. It was an eye that knew that Cter was lying. "I know you and your magic." The eye disappeared into the feathery darkness with a sigh. "And if someone were about to touch at it with just a finger it would come crumbling down like icicles during winter."

Cter joined her friend on the makeshift chair on the opposite side of the pot stewing nicely on the roof-table with Idyll's fire magic. "Yeah, well..." The Monster Mage scoffed a chuckle. "It's too far away from the balcony for anyone to touch at it, luckily."

A bowl of savory stew was poured with a deep metal ladle, "I guess so," and handed over to the Monster Mage who took it in both her cupped hands. "No Royal Guards directly underneath it as well, which means they won't risk a piece of yellow-colored crystal magic bouncing hard against their helmets."

"You're stuck on the icicle metaphor as if it was a puddle of hot sap, Idyll," marked Cter while sipping her stew. "Is it because you have a good view of them falling off the roof from the windows in the kitchen?" She should have blown on it first, she came to regret.

The second bowl of stew was for Idyll. "I like to have them open during winter as the cold pulls down the hanging fat from the more hearty meals we cook. It's also nice to see the winter landscape and not just fog on the windows, you know?" She blew on her stew before she sipped at it which was the better choice. "And when I'm waiting for something to simmer or finish baking I like to see if I can hit one of the falling icicles with some fire magic as they fall down the window."

Idyll's index finger pointed forwards. "Like an arrow shot by that green-clothed human from the stories, you know?" A small fireball flew from her claw. "Twang." As it dissipated, she made a sizzling sound with her mouth, "Fzzz," spitting out some stew in the process.

Cter tugged a cheeky smile. "I'm guessing you've gotten quite good at that, no?" Then she let some ice magic form into a clump of snow in her left hand while she raised a challenging eyebrow towards her friend.

An even cockier eyebrow was given as an acceptance to the challenge. "I'll even do it with my arms folded to begin with." Idyll placed her stew on the roof-table, which Cter also did as it too was the best of the choices available to her, and folded her blue arms over her chest with her arms deep into her armpits.

The snowball thrown by the Monster Mage sailed into the sunset-stained landscape of hills, lakes, and the dinner-busy town of Jarasevo below. It blended in with the white of the clouds tinted orange on their fluffy stomachs.

"Twang."

Before becoming all orange for a moment as Idyll's easily aimed fire magic connected with the magical snowball and sizzled into steam.

"Fzzz."

Cter nodded in accept of her defeat with an impressed scowl tugging at her face and making her look twenty years older. "Fair enough."

Idyll didn't manage a snarky comment in response, as another sizzle caught the two friends' ears. They looked to where the sound came from.

The yellow-colored crystal soul held upside-down by a poorly woven string of barricade magic hanging a distance away from the castle balcony where Cter had summoned it from.

Sensing the immediate drop in Cter's mood, Idyll tried to express some levity. "It didn't break," she pointed out while the conjured crystal rotated tiredly from the impact of the magical snow. "Maybe we can touch it after all?" Even as she spoke it she knew that it wouldn't help as much as she wanted it to. "Eat some more stew," she tried instead with a friendly smile and an encouraging nod. "It'll help."

It would, that Cter knew. It was Idyll's cooking, and that always helped. Still though… "It's not what I tried to do." Cter swirled the spinach-sprinkled stew in her bowl. "I meant for it to be like his earpiece, but whenever I tried to picture it and the shape all I could see was..." Cter bit her tongue before she accidentally–

"Was his human soul?"

The Monster Mage blinked with fear at her friend. "How?"

"I saw yours," Idyll said with utmost seriousness before strengthening herself with her own stew. "When you arrived back here with Sarbor." While she refilled her bowl she looked Cter in the eyes to see how much the Monster Mage recognized what she was talking about. She didn't find a lot. "They haven't told you all of what happened when you came back here, did they?"

With building ire her eyes flicked down behind her towards the other side of the Royal Gardens where Priestess Frioke's office was. Strangely she did not flick her ire at Sir Gerson's office which was on the front of Jarasevo Castle.

"I haven't really asked them directly about it," Cter confessed with a small shrug that displaced her collected braid off her Kurant-borrowed robe. Her green one she'd given to Fang Shuey to wash more thoroughly since she felt the presence of dust in it after she conjured the yellow crystal shaped like Sund's human soul hung from a weaved string of barricade magic. Making the barricade magic into a weave of strings had it feeling more like her magic, which even Queen Toriel felt that it was. "She was there too, I'm guessing?"

"Hm?" wondered Idyll with a tilt of her head that caught the blazing-orange of the sunset in her hair. "She who?"

"Queen Toriel," Cter explained after realizing that it was all in her thoughts. "Sorry, just me thinking."

"It's what you do," agreed Idyll with another, more animated tilt of her head. "For better or worse."

Fair.

"But yes, she was there too," Idyll continued after drinking some more stew. "How couldn't she? It felt almost the same as that night of ours down in Jarasevo years ago." Her hands clenched at her bowl as her aura echoed the cold shiver up her spine. "Or at least, so I was told. Didn't really feel it the first time around, because, you know..."

Cter did.

"What I felt though…" Idyll's eye disappeared behind her black plumage which scrunched with her hesitant expression. "What we all felt though, was like the air before a massive thunderstorm. This oppressive, pushing, heavy weight on my aura that threatened to give me the most splitting of headaches."

Idyll poured herself some water.

"And then," she said low while her expression sank as if she had smelled something truly rancid, "the headache moved inwards. It seeped through my body as if it was absorbing the oppressive air into my aura. Deeper and deeper, like how a roast soaks the broth it is cooked in. Rare, to medium rare, to well done, in a way, was how I felt underneath that oppressive presence."

Cter studied her friend as the Monster Chef's face descended more and more into a shadowy dark. Not a pleasant one like the color of her feathers, but a more frightening dark that seemed to suck the luster from her bright hair that had stopped reflecting the deep-orange of the setting Monster Country sun. Just from looking Cter could tell that it sat as freshly unpleasant for Idyll as it had done for the others the days following the faithful night down in Jarasevo.

After having drunk some water Idyll could continue. "Thing too is that I somehow knew that I wasn't the only one that felt the oppressive presence. It simmered more slowly, that feeling, but before I turned to look towards the crest of the hill over there," she pointed where a small tangent of Royal Guard dogs where helping a human farmer unload sacks of wheat, "I already knew that I would see Barbeqa doing the same. She felt it too, with her flames turning a strange kinda-brown. It was like the rye you get when adding the snails before the broth, you know?"

Idyll then realized who it was she was talking to, and retracted her analogy. "Almost like your hair," she said instead while reaching over the pot with her rolled-up arm. "But more...uh...flaming."

The brief glint in Cter's eye had Idyll letting the small bundle of strands go while displaying her palm.

"I wasn't thinking about it," she defended. "I promise. The stench of charred human hair is not something I want to smell if I can help it. No offense."

Burnt monster hair didn't smell much better, but still. "None taken."

"Anyways," Idyll reluctantly returned with a sigh. "Barbeqa and I didn't even look at each other. We both knew that the other one knew that we felt the same thing. I don't know if it was our auras coming together or something, but damn, if it was then it wasn't through our doing." She said it as if she was doubting that Cter would believe her. Or perhaps that she herself didn't believe her own words. "Soon we all walked towards the entrance of the castle as if we were those spiders the Spider Butcher controlled, remember?"

The one that Cter had helped and then woken up in her bed with said spiders crawling all over her?

Yeah, she remembered that too.

With a shiver.

Which warm stew luckily remedied.

"There were only a few of us that looked as if they were going towards the main gate with a purpose, but we all felt that we had to be there. Really, the only ones that had any thought in their eyes and aura were Priestess Frioke, the Monster Mages, and King Asgore and Queen Toriel." Idyll's eyes looked down closer to the castle entrance. "Even Sir Gerson walked like us rank-and-file with that disorientated look on his face."

Idyll tried, but she couldn't recreate the vacant look. She came close to it once or twice before she canceled it with a rough huff. "I was on the second floor looking out an opened window with like four different shoulder plates pushing against me and squeezing to try and peek a look too to the carriage that slowly crawled up the bend of the hill."

Her eyes blinked to where it had been. "Each groove in the cobblestone the worn wheels seemed to get stuck in before crawling out with great effort." She followed where her memory showed her where and how it moved. "Inside was what all of us monsters were called upon to get to." Until it stopped. "Inside was..."

"Me."

Inside the carriage that Sarbor had escaped with Cter from the military encampment.

"No, not you."

...No?

It wasn't Cter?

But then…

"It wasn't you that radiated that oppressive aura. That weighty, pushing aura that held us all as if in a trance." Idyll's hair whipped as she snapped her head around to her friend, eyes as fiery as the deeply set sun. "I know you, Cter. I know your magic. I know your aura. You're my best friend that I want to call sister!" Her finger which she had shot at Cter's conjured snowball with so playfully instead pointed with a rage and anger that burned hotter than her fire magic had. "Whatever it was that bled that...miasma...wasn't you!"

Her voice, even if turned away from the Royal Garden, echoed like those hardened resin balls Cter used to throw against the rocks in the forest around her human village to see how high they would bounce.

It took a few hard breaths for Idyll to regain composure of her aura and breath.

"Whatever it was, the fusion, the fusion living in your soul or arm, or whatever the hell it was, it was the reason that we all felt compelled to gather towards it." Her shoulders softened, as did the curl of her raven feathers. "At the same time though we also felt compelled to keep at a distance. There was something else, another presence, that kept us from walking right up to the carriage." Idyll nodded ever so slightly. The only movement was on her feathers. "And that, that was you, Cter."

She couldn't help but feel like she was doing a disservice to her friend as Idyll turned to her with eyes so tender and full of love and thanks. "I don't remember," Cter apologized. "I don't remember any of it. Even now I don't remember any of it." She looked down at her chest where she placed her sleeved hand. "I've been thinking about why." Not enough to tell anyone. "And I think that my soul does not want me to remember."

With Idyll Cter could tell anything though. "They can remember to the point that they remember what the human should have forgotten had their soul not remembered." Like with Kurant's soul and her injury. "And if so then they should be able to forget too, shouldn't they, the human souls?"

Idyll poured some water for her friend that descended into furrowed thinking.

"Memories are emotions reconstructed to relive them again. Even if you don't remember a sight or a smell, you remember the emotion it brought you. The song you heard when you were so very little you don't remember the lyrics to, but you remember how much you enjoyed hearing the song. Emotions are how we not only recall memories, but create them in the first place. Both humans and monsters share this. A human can remember exactly the same as a monster can, and vice versa."

Cter blinked away from her furrowed mumbling to her friend offering water for her. "Which means that it is something common between humans and monsters, perhaps all living things in this world. It is through the soul that emotions are filtered, which means that it can either stop or let through memories its vessel should or shouldn't forget according to it."

The Monster Chef nodded along her friend's explanation. "It doesn't actually sound like a surprise to me, if I'm being honest." It wasn't what she meant to say though, which had her scratching the back of her head while tugging an unsure expression. "I mean, I feel like I already knew it to be that way, but haven't never really put it into words before? Maybe…" Her arms crossed. "Maybe it's because you're correct?" Then her neck bent like a question mark. "Maybe it's because it is so that we all have that in common that we haven't really...acknowledged it? I mean, you'd react if there was something different with the stew, but you're not because it's what you're used to."

Idyll explained equally as much with her mouth as she did with her arm and hand. "So maybe...because we all have this, because all living things remember through their own soul, that no one has never really given it any thought." Her explaining arm faded with the color on her face. "Your soul though...and what has happened with it." She bit down. "No wonder you're the one that began thinking about it."

Cter couldn't, and wouldn't, dismiss that notion.

"Especially considering what you did that day, Cter."

She had heard that phrase oh so many times, but finally she was about to hear what it actually entailed. What she actually did. What her soul did.

Idyll inhaled deeply and slowly through her muzzle. "As we watched through the castle window huddled together, half feeling like we had to get to your carriage and half wanting to get away from it, freezing us in place, we, as well as everyone else in the castle leaning out the castle windows facing Jarasevo enough to risk lop-siding the castle, were as of one aura." She drank some water. "And then, we all flinched at Kry's scared roar. He demanded whatever was inside the carriage to step out and reveal themselves.

The fear in his voice though had it sounding like he'd rather whatever that was in the carriage turn around, leave, and never come back again. I think though hearing himself and the fear he had steeled him, for he turned from this," Idyll demonstrated a rather averse posture, "to this." Then she took step forward with shoulders rolled. "His sleeved arm he used to throw back his cloak behind him, displaying it threateningly with fire magic dripping like molten glass off his sleeve.

With how vivid it was for Idyll in her aura Cter could almost picture the scene herself down on the cobblestone below. The carriage, Kry, and even the curious and afraid heads poking out the windows. The marble front of Jarasevo Castle was drenched in sunset, its luster that of legend which Cter could enjoy ever single day whenever she wanted. How would it have looked with the fear pouring down each window, staining the luster?

"He threw worried looks up at the king and queen too, I remember," Idyll added before her half-feathered lips touched the rim of her wooden cup of water. "There was an uncomfortable silence that hung in the air between the castle and the carriage, but then the door to the carriage opened, and a human stepped out." She caressed the side of her cup with long strokes of her thumb. "It was Sarbor."

Cter let her friend enjoy the brief moment she was filled with such joy seeing her older human brother again.

It was a very, very short moment though.

"Before I could shout his name Kry screamed another demand for Sarbor to identify himself. Before I again could shout his name, Sarbor told Kry who he was and that he was carrying with him you in the carriage. He put weight that he had sedated you, reiterating it twice, but no one seemed to understand why he did so. There was a second when I could see, even from the distance that I was from the carriage, that his face contorted into panic and regret. I've...I don't think I've seen his face like that before. I still recall how he looked when he heard about when our parents died, but even then..."

Idyll had to blink away from that memory with a shake to her head.

"Thing is, I don't think anyone heard him," she continued after letting her hair settle from the rapid shake. "I think only I heard him. Seeing him again, I broke through, in a way." After an almost-invisible inhale she looked Cter in the eyes once more. "Like how you managed after seeing me." With a smile. "If the soul can make you forget, then it can also make you remember, like you said. No matter the darkness, love can break through it, it seems."

Had there not been a table and a pot between the two friends they would have hugged each other.

It would have to be for later though.

"Sarbor's head then whipped towards inside the carriage." Idyll's smile faded away. "He staggered backwards, before standing his ground, even if he was leaning as far back as he could." Faded and faded. "Then stepped out..." Faded and faded. "I don't want to say that it was you, Cter." More and more. "I don't want to say that it was you!"

Again Idyll had to breathe through gritted teeth, once or twice coming close to swallowing one of her raven feathers with how hard she breathed in.

"It stepped out," she continued with eyes glaring down at where the carriage stood, her aura igniting with hate and anger. "It stepped out unlike you. It lumbered unlike you. It smiled–" Cold, merciless ice mixed with the fiery anger. "But it wasn't you. Its aura wasn't yours. It wore your aura as if it was a mask, same with Sund's, and what I've been told was Dr. Sallus'!" Her arms tensed with fire and ice magic, storming up and down in vortexes. The water in her cup both boiled and froze instantly, as did the stew in the bowl on her lap. Cter didn't say or do anything, but was at the ready to should it be necessary.

"It used your crystal magic, but what it conjured had spikes like vicious thorns jutting out of what it surrounded your left arm with. It kept adding more and more until it became too much for your sedated body to hold up, so it dragged it instead, scarring a deep gash in the cobble."

Cter looked to where Idyll was staring. If she squinted she could see that the cobble Idyll was staring at had been recently replaced. From where she sat on the roof she could see exactly how far the gash reached, starting from where Idyll had started intensely where the carriage was, all the way to…

Singe her soul...

"The sound of your crystal magic chiming in pain as it was dragged and morphed into vicious thorns was worse than claws on blackboard. There was no melody to it, only awful noise that cut like a rusty knife." Idyll looked down at the entrance to the castle, where Cter was staring too. "None had noticed, but King Asgore and Queen Toriel had left the balcony and hurried down to join their Monster Mages against what it was that lumbered towards them wearing your skin and aura. Kry demanded that it stopped, and when it did, curiously, he asked what it was. Why it had the aura of you, Sund, and Dr. Sallus."

"What did it–"

"It didn't," Idyll cut off as if she had forgotten who it was she was speaking to.

Again.

"It didn't answer, but when viscous white began pouring out your robe's sleeve, they all laid a barrage of magical attacks against it. I've never seen or felt such...vengeance. From two Monster Mages and the Monster Royals flew fire, ice, stasis, tridents, and more that I couldn't tell due to how much it was in such a short period of time. Like all the spices in the world combined in one dish."

Cter felt...at peace hearing that. The feeling of relief that they understood the danger was overwhelming compared to the realization that they had attacked her body. The fact that she still had a body didn't bode well for her.

Even though she knew the aftermath.

"All of their power, all of their combined magic, only shattered against a wall of barricade magic that it raised in front of itself. The thorn-covered crystal magic it had stolen from you it had thrown away like a dirty glove so that it could raise its barricade magic to block each and every attack from the most powerful monsters in the castle."

…

But the–

"But then," Idyll's tongue failed her as a slight scoff had her eyes blinking in disbelief. "But then Sarbor stuck it with a syringe in its neck." She moved away her long hair and pointed exactly where on her own neck. Cter grabbed hers at that spot, but didn't feel anything. "A reverse sedative, he said that it was. He didn't know exactly why he decided that it was a good idea, or why he snuck up on it from behind. It was just...what he did. If the barricade magic broke then he wasn't needed, but since it held he wasn't in any danger from the magical attacks, so he just...did." Idyll shrugged. "Has he apologized for it to you?"

Cter shook her head. "No, no he hasn't."

"Good." Idyll nodded. "Because he shouldn't. What he did was wake you up. He saved you."

Again.

"It was then that I took out my soul, wasn't it?" said Cter with another look down at where it had happened. "It must have been."

"It was as orange as the sun is right now."

The red Cter had seen glowing from her chest at the training grounds and Sund's yellow held together by the fusion.

"You screamed as you grabbed at something white on your soul, like thick butcher's string, and tore it off. When you did, it was as if a bubble expanded from your soul and washed away the oppressive presence. We all stood in shock, not knowing what it was we had seen. What it was that you had torn out your chest that glowed so intensely." Idyll's hand came to rest on her chest. "It looked like mine, but upside down, which I think everyone realized sooner rather than later. That what you tore out from your chest with pain and effort looked like their own soul, but upside down."

Cter's hand touched at her own chest and–

"No!"

She slapped her own chin at the loud yelp from her friend which startled something fierce.

"Don't do it again!"

Cter...wasn't. "I wasn't," she blurted like she had been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. "I wasn't gonna. I promise."

Idyll sat back down from her hurried stand up. "Alright," she said to herself with a sigh. "Okay, good." There wasn't a lot of color on her face. "Sorry, I didn't say that because I don't want to see it again. It's just..."

Cter understood. "Doesn't mean good things, seeing it."

A quick nod. "No, not anything good.."

Then a silence passed the two by.

"Thank you for telling me, Idyll."

"Of course."

And the two returned to eating.

Without knowing that just out of the border of Monster Country another carriage was approaching.

With a letter made out of lead.