"With his queen and princess leaving him before their time my grandfather made sure to not only doubly hide the fact that my soul was magically potent, but he taught me to conceal it, and not to feel it either. To be the one I needed to be, and not the one that I had to be due to my soul's magical potential. What I needed to be was someone who could return to the Xoff castle due to my laurels I've grown myself and not through family. My grandfather was not fit to rule, no matter how well history has painted his rule as. It was all his queen, and the hope that his princess would be queen too when he sat upon his throne."

The Royal Mage sighed with lament.

"But those were taken from him. Taken from him when his hopes were at the highest. His queen just before they would be able to sing their jubilation over having an heir, and with his princess when..."

Rasliela motioned over herself slowly from head to waist with her sleeved hand.

"Had my mother been in Jarasevo her condition could have been salvaged, just as how my grandmother's could have been salvaged had it presented itself today." A minuscule chortle puffed through the Royal Mage's nostrils. "He never blamed anyone though, even when at his lowest. Even when he was torn between joy beyond belief and grief beyond belief while holding his granddaughter tightly as his daughter loosened her mortal coil he did not lose hope. Raising a human on his own from then on proved...tricky, for the self-exiled king. Plagued forever by the life his granddaughter could have had and what she deserved, and doing his all to provide it."

As a show of sympathy, Cter poured the next round of tea for the Royal Mage and her. Gently she used her stasis magic to pour another round. The kettle did not have a lot of tea left in it. "What's kingly may never rest?" the Monster Mage then said so that the Royal Mage would notice that her tea had been refilled. "I hope he found peace with you at the edge of his bed during his last moments."

With a growing, bemused smile Rasliela picked up her cup without a coaster. "Funny you should put it that way," she scoffed through her nose, perturbing the calm skin of the dark tea. with her sleeved arm angled up. "Considering."

"Yeah..." Cter nodded distantly while her eyes moved on their own onto her own sleeve. "Considering..." She had considered more than the Royal Mage could ever imagine.

"I would tell you that it is different from a normal Cooperative Connection, but truth be told I have only had my grandfather on my sleeve and never anynone else. He's been with me all my life, even if he's a bit...quieter now than when he was in my younger years." The younger years when he was still alive, Cter assumed. With more exposure to a Boss Monster's memories the mage became more like the Boss Monster, as again proven by Kry and Kurant. "I'm sure you can still tell though, can't you?"

Cter nodded as she drank some tea, but it was a rather-reserved nod. For while the story Rasliela shared was true and truly tragic, the way she framed it sounded a bit too much like she was defending her grandfather. "So you didn't really have much of a choice, is what I am hearing?" Maybe she should have waited a bit more with asking it. "Are you sure that a Royal Mage was what you needed to be?" Might as well go the whole mile.

"In the same sense that a chalice do not choose its form when the mold is filled, no. My grandfather was the one that made the mold that I filled, true, but he did so to the best of his abilities. However still, to me, it was my grandfather making sure that I made a choice while I could still act on it, which he failed to." Rasliela made a show of forming a slow and gentle fist with her sleeved hand. "Like how you would need to talk to a Whimsun as if giving them no other choice lest they spend the allotted time for the task worrying about the other options."

That was a bit too accurate for Cter's taste.

"And as I told you before, I am also the General of Noitaidarr, Monster Mage," the General of Noitaidarr added with a wry smirk. "My grandfather taught me well when it came to castle politics seeing as he was at the top of it for many years. He taught me which monsters to have close to me as well as which humans to keep at an arm's length. I came here as a mage, but rose as a County General." Rasliela smirk became a smile while she brandished her sleeve. "For on the occasions that I need to consult someone higher up than me I can always ask my grandfather."

"Didn't you say that he was quieter than before?" Either she lied about it or the full effect of a Boss Monster soul inside a Cooperative Connection was–

"Matter of speech."

Ah…

Cter's eyes flickered to the general's sleeve while her mouth bent and pouted from side to side. "Has he been...consulting you during our conversation?" she posed, feeling slight unease. If anything she gained an equally slight understanding as to why her colleagues and friends were so afraid of her when she returned to Jarasevo from the tragedy of Clinic Hill. Hell, even when she was thrown into the dungeon after that faithful night with Idyll. It had been a lot of other shoes for Cter in a very short time.

She didn't particularly enjoy it coming at her back to back. Had it been just one then fair enough.

But all of them?

"I consulted him, yes," the general said surprisingly willingly with a few soft nods. "Not during our conversation though, be it at this table in the garden or outside your guest room door." The nods turned into soft shakes, swaying the gray-streaked hair until it settled like nothing had happened. Impressive. "There have been some...questions raised between him and I since the wind of what happened at Clinic Hill reached to here. Questions that could not be answered at the time due to the plague still ravaging at its full potential. Noitaidarr was struck hard by it, harder than it had before."

The general's eyes grew distant for the length of a slow, contemplative inhale. "A damn hero, he is," she muttered under her breath. "His place in the history books will amount to the length of a chapter dedicated purely to himself. How he rode through each plague-devastated village to gather up the remaining strength of the Xoff people to then brave through county after county establishing routes of communication and trade once more." An equally slow exhale had the general nodding to herself. "If there ever was a vote for a king..."

Cter knew who it was the General of Noitaidarr was talking about. It was the officer that had saved her and Sarbor coming down from Clinic Hill. She wasn't gonna mention it though. Rasliela most likely already knew that Cter knew, especially since Sarbor was with the entourage from Monster Country.

"Forgive me," the general pleaded as she shook herself out of her thoughts. "It's rude to fall away into other thoughts when having tea and company."

Cter wasn't gonna mention that either. She would have been quite the hypocrite had she chastised the Royal Mage for disappearing into her thoughts.

Or wait...no…

The General of Noitaidarr? Or was it the Royal Mage?

Which…

"Who have I been speaking to?" the Monster Mage blurted rather suddenly without prompt. "Is it the Royal Mage or the General of Noitaidarr?"

"Well...both," Rasliela answered after the blurted shock washed off her. "You've been speaking to both, haven't you?"

Had she?

"Same as you need to balance being a monster and a human I need to balance being a Royal Mage and the General of Noitaidarr, Monster Mage." Rasliela straightened out in her chair. "Granted, I've been more of the Royal Mage with you since the matter at hand is about magic. However though," she said to the side away from Cter, "it is Rasliela who is the one that wants to know."

Know what, exactly?

Rasliela held her gaze averted for a few deep breaths. "It was an...intense experience when he offered me his entire soul." Her brow lowered just the slightest. "There was neither time or chance for us to practice it beforehand, and when his proud, calm expression disappeared into naught but dust, his white soul remained for his unprepared granddaughter to take care of. He promised that I would be ready when I had to, but that was a lie. Had there been any doubt in me that he was not a Boss Monster then those were far and gone by the time I cupped his quivering soul inside my hands, asking him why he lied to me about me being ready." Her hands came together to form a bowl which she stared intently into. "The monster that had raised me...in my hands. He did not answer when I asked, so I had to bring him closer to me to hear him."

Still Cter could not sense or feel Rasliela's true intent and emotion. She could see it, clear as the blue Xoff sky above, but not feel it.

There was a long silence as Rasliela stared inside her hand-made bowl where she seemed to be thinking a lot. About her grandfather, Cter guessed. It was the most likely situation, after all. What else would she have been thinking about?

"And this is why I approached you, Cter."

"O...kay?" the Monster Mage could not stop dripping from her tongue as she was struck with stupor. She wasn't expecting that kinda sincerity. "How do you mean?"

The hand-made bowl bounced slowly, clenching just the slightest. "I fell to my knees despite promising him that I wouldn't. That I would stand tall and strong like I had always done. He wasn't going anywhere, if anything he was getting closer to me than ever before. I was to make a legacy with his soul, with the culmination of his entire being. That was what I promised him, yet still my weight collapsed down onto the squeaky floorboards."

Rasliela had to pause for a breather to keep control over her aura. The lines on her sleeve had begun to glow faintly too which Cter kept a very close eye on. "He was warm. I remember so vividly how warm he was. Not just in my hands, but in my soul too. Like a cup of freshly made coffee at the coldest of nights it warmed through me holding all that he was in my hands. I could not enjoy that warmth for long though, for it began to shake and quiver violently. How it felt when it touched one of my fingers in its violent shakes was like..."

While Rasliela rubbed her naked thumb and ring finger together to jog her memory, Cter let her attention drift more towards the growing glow on the Royal Mage's sleeve. It had to be that she was going back to such a strong and vivid memory about her grandfather, so far as to describe how the king's soul was warm and how it felt to her touch, that his soul began to react enough for the activity to be visible. The Monster Mage sharpened her aura to be easier to sense when the Royal Mage inevitably lost herself into her memory enough for Cter to finally read deeper.

"It was like the finest sand on the most wind-whipped of dunes." The rubbed-together thumb and ring finger opened up again to reshape the bowl. "So was his soul's texture as it began to turn into dust. Had I touched it earlier I might have been able to feel how it would feel normally, but the thought did not occur to me in the moment."

"Other things took priority," offered Cter with a nod towards the hand-made bowl.

Rasliela mirrored the nod, smiling more neutrally. "I began the process of creating a Cooperative Connection he had taught me just an hour or so before, immersing myself in the strong memories I had of my grandfather and projecting them into my sleeve. I did all of it correctly, yet something went...different."

Cter's ears perked. "Different?" She didn't like the way Rasliela's face furrowed, as it furrowed the same way Cter's did when she described what happened with Idyll's and hers soul. "Different how, exactly?"

"He..." The Royal Mage's furrow deepened to form the wrinkles that her age should have given her hadn't she been a powerful mage. "He missed. I...think he missed."

What? "He missed?" What did she mean by that? "Missed as in failed to create the Cooperative Connection?"

"Yes, but that don't describe it properly." Rasliela huffed out her nose. "In a way, it was as if his soul was not aiming for the sleeve to begin with. How it moved, it was not as if it was lost. It moved as if it had another purpose. Really, I can only say that he missed because if he didn't then..."

Then it meant that her soul was trying to absorb his soul. Either that or the king's soul tried to fuse with his granddaughter's soul. Both scenarios implied something scary for how Boss Monster souls work. If anything it helped explain a bit more why Kry and Kurant had become more and more like King Asgore and Queen Toriel respectively. If a boss monster soul was powerful enough to be absorbed by a human in a way that did not involve only siphoning the monster soul like how Cter's had done with Idyll's, then…

Then what, exactly?

Did it mean that the fusion was something more than what it already was? That it was one side of a coin? Was it inherit to souls, both human and monster, to be able to absorb others? Was it only possible between a human and a monster, or was it also possible between a human and a human? It wasn't for a monster and another monster, for that would have happened plenty of times before in history. Enough times that it would have been common knowledge. Extrapolating similarly to how everything else had been extrapolated from the monster soul to the human soul then that would mean that it had to be between a human and a monster.

Again the Inverted Soul theorem was proven true. A monster could absorb a human soul, which meant that the inverse had to be true too. A human could absorb a monster soul, but with added caveats. Caveats that were true for the monster soul too, but with them being too weak for the caveats to actually come into play.

"It means something, doesn't it, Monster Mage?" said Rasliela with a short chuckle. "You wouldn't disappear into this deep a thought while having tea with someone else had it not meant something." Her hands opened up, and she hooked her tea cup's ear with a finger like it was anything normal.

Did she play it up for Cter?

"I want to hear those deep thoughts," Rasliela countered towards the souring expression that grew on Cter. "That is why I am showing that I'm done speaking." She drank some tea. "Nothing else."

Mhm?

Well, Cter could hide things too. "It means that you did not project your memories out your soul properly." It was only the monster party sans Sarbor who knew how and why the fusion happened. He might also have known about the human soul, but he did not know that it was that had transpired between Sund's and Dr. Sallus' souls. He did not want to know.

The Royal Mage would have to wait until the trial. "From what you've told me I'm certain that it was due to your emotional state when performing the Cooperative Connection. Normally it is not a problem, even if it is taught that the human should be as emotionally neutral as possible just before the memory binding. The more emotionally neutral beforehand the easier it is to make the human memories and emotions bright enough for the monster memories to bind to the sleeve. Doubly in your case with the immediate loss of the one that was your family with him being a Boss Monster on top of that. I'm not going to say that it was the worst case scenario, for that implies you did something wrong. It was the...most emotional case. That we can call it."

Few looks Cter had received which matched the intense, detailed stare that the Royal Mage painted across the Monster Mage's face. Like tiny needles, Cter felt Rasliela's eyes poke at her cheeks to feel how soft or hard they were. Then at her lips to find any, if all, movement. Then up at her brow. Finally she stared intently into the windows to the Monster Mage's soul. Deep-purple against forest-green, with naught but the quiet wind caressing some of the leaves in the surrounding garden. No other audience present for the moment that would decide whether or not Rasliela could find as well as she could hide.

"Even after all I told you?"

Yes.

"Even after I bled my soul for you?"

Yes.

"Even after I shared with you that which I had never shared before?"

Yes.

"Even after all of that, you're still not being honest with me?"

Cter may have proven that such was the case by blinking away from the Royal Mage's eyes towards her tea. She may have continued to prove it by drinking slowly from her cup, leaving Rasliela without an answer for seconds on end. "You asked for my thoughts on the matter, Royal Mage." Then a few more by slowly putting down her cup back down on her conjured coaster. "And those were my thoughts on the matter." Yet while she knew that Rasliela knew that Cter was not sharing the whole story, she kept her facade steady.

To Rasliela's...delight?

"I'm grateful, Monster Mage."

She was… "'Scuse?" Cter blurted along with a fine mist of tea. She cocked her head. "In my good ear?"

"Still not perfect though..." Rasliela pushed herself up on her legs, motioning for Cter to sit instead of following up into a stand. "I trust it'll be enough though."

Enough?

Cter's bafflement had her standing up regardless, despite Rasliela's soft motion for her to keep sitting. It prompted a small nod from the Royal Mage while she reached for her pointy hat, "Better," which she fitted on her head with a tug down of the wide rim over her face. "I'm pleased and thankful that we had this talk, Monster Mage." The tip of the cone of the green hat was pointed at Cter with a bow. "The monsters might have a chance to defend themselves, after all."

Wait, was she…

"You might call it a tragedy what happened at Clinic Hill, Monster Mage," said Rasliela with a look through the leaves and flowers of the large garden towards Mt. Ebott and Mt. Ymmet. "That is not what it is called here in Xoff, and less so here in Noitaidarr, and even less so here in Noitaidarr Castle." She clutched hard at the Xoff insignia on her chest with her sleeved hand, crunching the important symbol like it was a used napkin. "And even less in here."

The chair Cter stood up from squeaked as it was pushed back by her flinching a step after hearing the vicious sharpness to the Royal Mage's words.

Or was it the General's words?

Rasliela's?

"Same in here," she added while displaying her sleeve once more. "My grandfather, the former king of Xoff, shares the thirst for justice after the slaughter that occurred at Clinic Hill at the hands of the monsters, as well as the loss of the lives that could have been prevented had Dr. Sallus found a cure for the plague."

"But it wasn't–"

Cter was silenced by Rasliela putting up the palm of her hand. "However, the two of us don't want the monsters to not have a worthy case on their side. It is important that they remain on equal footing when it comes to political weight lest the balance between the two races will begin to crumble." The tanned palm returned to Rasliela side. "If you, the most important, yet also the weakest, link in the chain the monsters are presenting can still stand strong despite attempts to persuade you otherwise then there is still a chance that things might end favorably." She coughed once into her sleeved hand. "Considering."

Attempting to persuade? "So what you told me were all lies then?" Cter retraced the step she flinched back with. "Lies to persuade me to share what I shouldn't?"

Rasliela brow wrinkled with shock. "Lies?" She shook her shock away. "No, no lies. If I wanted you to be true to me I first had to be true to you, did I not?"

Cter's answer came in the form of a hard glance down at Rasliela's sleeve.

"Heh," quipped out of the dark shadow below the wide, green brim. "Don't think that just because I've enjoyed your company and conversation that I'm willing to let you in to consult with my grandfather and me." Both arms folded behind the emerald-green poncho that the Royal Mage had over her robe. "I told you from the beginning that keeping things fair was not being prepared enough, didn't I?" The loose fabric fluttered as Rasliela turned around. "And now I know and understand how the most powerful mage in the world acts and thinks." She took long steps into the garden. "Rest well until the trial tomorrow, Monster Mage."

Disappearing into the greenery after just a few faint ones.

"We all need you for it."