"Steady on, Cter."

The ceiling was blindingly white. The Fourth Monster Mage could barely open her eyes without them immediately stinging like knives were being shoved into them. She sucked in through gritted teeth, and moved her hand to cover in front of her eyes and–

"Not that one."

A hard push onto Cter's left wrist had her only tensing the tendon at the bend of her arm like a thick violin string. With rapid blinks she turned her head to her left hand hidden behind the felt coat arm of Sarbor's. Tightly wrapped bandages ran the length of her left arm, only visible to her due to the bulges of red where padding was stuffed into where her carvings were.

"It's better if you use your other hand for now, Cter," Sarbor informed at the top of his arm. His black hair and mustache helped her eyes adjust enough to register the furrow on his forehead. The wrinkles he folded were deep, but when he saw that Cter was looking at him, he smoothed them out for her sake. "You wouldn't mind turning the other way for a bit for me?"

His mustache lifted with his doctor's smile. "And please be truthful when I'm asking. I don't have a big book for you to put your hand on, and the only oath relevant here is the one I've taken, but you would for me, please?"

She nodded meekly before turning her head, rolling her right cheek onto her combined braid while purple dots began to cloud her vision. The other side of the stiff bed she laid on was even whiter than the ceiling she had woken up to. Between the purple dots she could see some medical charts written in Xoff, as well as...some…

Wait, what was that feeling?

That...pressure? It was the same as how her left hand's fingertips, but...lower? Lower down her fingers, like taps into a dough. No pain, but a pressure she felt in her hand that something had happened on her finger. She did not know what or how, only that it had happened. Further and further down her fingers until right at the very bottom knuckle to then start over at the top of the next finger. Her thumb, index, long, ring, and pinky finger. Then on her–

"Ow."

"Your palm is still yours then," Cter heard Sarbor say more to himself than to her. "Let me know when you stop feeling the scrape." There was some metallic rustling. "Ready?"

Cter's began to turn her head, but decided against it. From what she could tell she already knew what it was that had happened. "I'm ready." The flesh-like white the fusion had left on her fingers had descended down her fingers further. "Now." And from where she felt the discomfort of the scraping of one of Sarbor's sharp tools stop at the very base of her index finger, she knew that it was all of her fingers. "Now." Same at her long finger. "Now." Her ring finger. "Now." Pinky finger. "Now." And her thumb.

As Sarbor lifted his hand from Cter's wrist she could feel that he was weighted by the development. "Don't put it over your face," he cautioned through a lamenting sigh. "It might drip into your eyes."

The Monster Mage heeded her doctor's advice, and instead turned to face her left arm laid outstretched over a turned night table. She could not see her fingers for a few seconds due to them blending in with the white walls of the room. Moving them she could feel how it tensed the tendons on the back of her hand as well. Back and forth was relatively normal, considering.

Side to side though her fingers began to stick together, almost making three larger fingers rather than the five she had. Even when she stretched out her fingers as hard as she was able to it took a short while before they separated. It was akin to the time she came across two love-struck snowdrakes when she was working as her own mage in Jarasevo.

What was meant as a gentle kiss on the cheek had the female snowdrake's lips frozen on the icy blush, stuck like honey dipped on ice with a stick like back in Cter's Hjearta village.

God, what would Romrom have said if Cter had gotten five of those chilled honey treats stuck together?

"I'm glad you're keeping good spirits about it," chuckled Sarbor, relieved. "How's your right arm?"

Her right arm? "What do you mean?" Was it afflicted by the fusion's white too?

"You were lucky when you fainted," Sarbor made clear as he quickly noticed Cter's frightened inhale. "Your head landed on your right arm rather than on the mosaic floor. You've a bruise from it, but if it hurts more than just a bruise then I'll have to check for fractures. You fell heavily." His voice became hushed. "Very heavily."

Cter flexed her fingers on her right hand. The sense of touch was comforting at first, but quickly faded into a tingling itch. Cter had comforted herself that it was just the fingertips on her left hand that had been afflicted by the fusion's white. It had just been her fingertips, and nothing more.

More it had been though.

And she was sure she knew why.

"When was the last time you had water today?" interrupted Sarbor while placing a wooden mug in reach of Cter's right hand. She took it without any grimacing, and her doctor took the taking as a sign that her arm wasn't hurting. He smiled at the silver lining.

"To me it looked as if it was heat exhaustion that made you fall. The way you moved just before, and the slurring. I know you had plenty of water on your prosecutions' table, but I never saw you take a single drink from yours. I never saw any of you drink. Only the Field General and the Xoff Royal Mage drank. It's difficult to know that you're heat exhausted once it has begun to creep in on you, which was why I reminded you all to drink more regularly than you think you would need. Especially with the thicker fabric you're wearing compared to Xoff natives."

With slight shame, Cter averted her eyes from Sarbor's. "I know," she muttered into her mug before she drank from it, realizing as soon as the cold, refreshing water touched her lips and tongue that she was extremely parched. Uncouthly, she tilted her mug up fully, instinctively reaching for it with her left hand too. That Sarbor put a stop to, pushing down the left arm with a towel over Cter's hand.

"Don't want you flicking the white around here."

While Cter drank her water her doctor dried off her fingers as best as he could. Hard enough to dry off the accumulated white that had begun to drip, but not too hard as to risk drying off the white all the way to the bones, if there were any left.

"It has a looser consistency than it had before," said Sarbor while folding the towel to use the clean side for the white that had dripped down onto Cter's palm. "Reminds me of a wound opened after having not healed fully. I would hazard that it is because you've exerted yourself magically." He folded once more for the back of Cter's hand. "Specifically, you exerted yourself magically in conjunction with the fusion. That seems to be the important factor here."

In a way the fusion's white on Cter's fingers was like an illness to her, so it was no wonder that Sarbor figured it quickly. He knew the symptom and the underlying cause, so with a worsened symptom it had to be something from the underlying cause being provoked.

And Cter did provoke it just a few steps below trying to resurrect it properly…

"Just drink for now," Sarbor suggested friendly. "I can see that you're trying to think and it'll do you better with your inner balance restored. Your head is connected to your body, after all."

It took a few more filled mugs of water before Cter began to feel nauseous at the amount of water she had practically inhaled. She looked suspiciously at the teaspoon of salt Sarbor then offered her amid her greedy breaths of air rather than water. "Trust me," he explained, which he knew was enough for Cter. "The human body needs a balance of salt and water," Sarbor still continued out of reflex.

"Doctor…" He huffed quietly. "Dr. Sallus found it to be helpful for those who've needed to replenish a lot of liquid. We found that it helped patients recovering from the plague, but we only had so much salt to go around at Clinic Hill. Since we had to use the salt to trap miasma from the air we had to make a choice about what to use our salt for."

The doctor sighed with a squint out a nearby opened window.

"One of many."

Yeah…

Choices…

"I won't lie and say that you conjuring up what Dr. Sallus and Sund became sat well with me, Cter." Sarbor touched at his chest. "In fact, I think I felt the aura it gave me for the first time in a month."

"I'm sorry," Cter offered even though she knew that it wasn't enough. "I just..." She was so angry. "The Field General… I had to do something. I had to–"

"Not to me," Sarbor cut short with a raised palm. "I'm only a witness. You need to talk with the others, and apologize to them instead of me."

As if summoned, the door to the infirmary was opened from the outside.

"And it is I who should apologize," said Sarbor with another gritted huff, this time against himself. "I knew that there was a chance of my aura flaring up again for me, and I shouldn't put on you something I knew could happened and told myself that I was prepared for. I promised Priestess Frioke that I would be able to ignore it like she had taught me to."

His hand detached from his chest like a piece of mosaic in the middle of a grand painting. "I'll be just outside trying to make good on that promise." He closed his doctor's bag with a satisfying click. "Don't hesitate to call for me if you're feeling discomfort. Drink some more in a bit too, will you?"

Cter nodded, prompting Sarbor to take his leave.

Before he reached the door he exchanged some words with Kry, Kurant, and Sir Gerson who waited patiently to see the patient. "The white on her fingers have grown, but otherwise she's fine."

"Otherwise?" piqued Kurant out of sheer reflex.

Sarbor nodded before Kurant could blurt out anything else. "In the sense of what I can help with," he clarified. "Her right arm isn't fractured and I've given her plenty of water and some salt."

One of Kry's eyebrow shot up behind his gold-rimmed glasses. "Salt?"

The good doctor smiled back at Cter, "She can explain," and closed the wooden door behind him. "Oh," he remembered as he reopened the door and poked his head inside. "Make sure to burn the towel when you're done. No need to let more of Cter's white be taken by the others." Sarbor closed the wooden door again, and his footsteps quieted quickly, leaving the infirmary room with just the sound of Cter refilling her mug with more water. Her colleagues waited as she drank slightly less greedily.

"How's your hand?" asked Kurant after a long silence. She tried to sound like it was just a fracture she was referring to, but failed in that. Even she realized it hearing her own voice bounce against the white walls, so she dropped the pretense immediately. "It doesn't hurt, does it?"

The remaining water sloshed at the bottom of Cter's mug as she swirled it around. "Doesn't hurt, no," she answered while following her colleagues eyes to her left hand laid sprawled out on the turned night table. "Sarbor theorized that it's because I exerted myself magically while recalling the fusion." Carefully, Cter let barricade magic grow from the carvings on her left arm, pushing out the dabs of cotton that had helped soak up the bleeding.

Her limit with using barricade magic without thinking about it was at fainting from magical exhaustion, it seemed.

Doubly carefully, Cter made sure to evoke Sund's presence in her soul through the memories of him and her tending to his flowers at Time's Square. His innocent smile while he rearranged some flowers with stasis magic and the gentle whistling he did in the meanwhile.

Cter pressed a finger onto one of the red splotches on her bandages as Sund in her memory began to turn towards her. The sharp sting tossed away the memory just before she saw his face. She didn't need more. She did not want more. More of Sund would lead to the fusion. It was inevitable that it did.

Once the stinging faded Cter pressed down on the red splotch a bit more carefully to feel if the barricade magic had settled properly. A layer hovering just above her exposed flesh, precisely as she wanted it to be. Filling the layer between the barricade magic and her wound with healing magic came next, tickling like the luxurious water from Hjearta with the bubbles in them.

One day she would manage to convince Barbeqa to try it.

One day…

"Not much more for today," Sir Gerson advised in regards to feeling Cter's aura and that she was coating her carvings with magic again. "You did enough yesterday, so keep it on the low for today, would you?"

With a pause that was visible over her whole body, Cter turned her head to Sir Gerson at the end of her bed. "Yesterday?" she asked with slight tension in her voice.

"So he didn't tell you," mused Sir Gerson under his breath while angling his body to the wooden door behind him. "Today is the second day of the trial hearing, Cter. You've been asleep for over half a day." He glanced down at the large mug Cter held with only her right hand. "I'm sure you could tell yourself that such was the case."

She was very parched, after all. "It had to be an extra day because of what I did?" Cter asked through her dried lips. The white of her fingers squished together like a wet, gunky sponge as she clenched a fist. It felt...weird. As she opened it up again the white tore off in strings from the flat of her palm, lifting her skin up. "I'm sorry."

"It was always going to be a second day," said Sir Gerson in response while sitting down on the left side of the bed with his hands clasped on his folded knee. There was slight excitement in his words. Was he...glad that there was to be a second day?

"Not only with the short of the days Xoff go about utilizing, but also the importance of the trial. Frankly it would have been insulting to both the monsters and the Field General if it was said and done in just a day. The ascension of the living hero of Xoff being all done in just one session would have made light of his accomplishments, if anything. Even if he was completely correct and what was thrown at him was all slander it would still have been necessary with two days, at the least."

Sir Gerson narrowed his eyes over to Cter's left hand covered in the white gunk of her fingers. "Don't think that the session today will be as active as the one yesterday though." A small scoff danced out his thick nostrils. "Not a lot of sleep going around last night, I reckon."

Besides Cter's...

"Hopefully they don't use that against us," mentioned Kry while taking a chair on the right side of Cter's bed. He leaned forwards with his palms flat together. "Accusing us of scare tactics with Cter conjuring up the fusion how she remembered it." He shuddered. "I think even the magically inert humans could feel the fear you had in your aura, Cter."

"And because of that I'm confident in that no one believes that Cter completely made the fusion's form up in her mind," Sir Gerson rebutted with a look over his shoulder and shell to Kry. "There is no imagination vivid enough to come close to imagining something as horrific and disgusting as that thing was."

A loud cough from Kurant stole the attention. "She lived it," the standing Monster Mage reminded with a nod towards Cter. "And she relived it yesterday in more detail that should ever be necessary." It began to click for Sir Gerson, but Kurant wanted to be fully sure. "Cter does not need to relive it again. One time was a million too many."

"One time is why we are here," Cter added with a deep inhale and even deeper exhale. "This time was out of my own choice though." She paid little mind to Kry refilling her mug with water. That it became heavier was almost a surprise to her. "I chose to do it because I thought it necessary. They had to know. They had to know what fate Dr. Sallus and Sund went through. They had to see what their souls became, and the agony and turmoil that was within the fusion's stolen souls."

Cter brought the lip of the wooden mug to her mouth, but did not find it in her to drink more. "They had to know." Her words echoed inside the half-filled mug. "They all had to..."

Outside the opened windows floated past the Royal Regulator on his rounds around the castle. He caught the eyes of Kurant, and raised his ghostly palms. "Don't none of this concern me, Monster Mage," he said with a bow of his head. "I'm only doing me rounds of the castle's windows. Whatever it be you lot be discussing in there is far above me and what I do." He pointed along the wall with the long and slender hook he carried with him magically. "That being said, I'll leave you lot alone now."

Kurant nodded back, acknowledging the half-apology.

"I'm sure they know by now, Cter," Kry then said after following the Royal Regulator with his gaze until the ghost monster was out of sight. "Which brings us, unfortunately, to the fact that they know." He straightened his back to sit upright in his chair. "And to the question of whether or not a martyr's message still rings strong if she returns well and good the day after."

There really wasn't another way for him to make the question any softer.

"I'm not saying what you did was wrong," Kry felt that he needed to add though. His sleeved arm angled up from the fold over his chest. "The tragedy that befell Dr. Sallus and Sund couldn't have been told more vividly than how you did." It folded back down. "However though, you also asked them to blame you, and only you, about the tragedy. You shouldered the blame of what transpired at Clinic Hill, Cter."

There was...helplessness in Kry's voice.

"It was all the work of one Monster Mage instead of all monsters, you asked them to see it as." Helplessness and blame. "Let you be the subject of the entirety of the weight due from the tragedy." Blame not towards Cter though. "Only you." But to himself. "And no one else."

For he didn't stop it when he could have.

"Reckless," said Sir Gerson straight out. "There's really no other way to describe what you did, Cter." His eye he turned to her was narrowed, which Cter averted hers from. "Reckless in a way that we can turn around to our advantage, however."

She...she did not expect that. Nor did she expect a wry smile from Sir Gerson as she lifted her head back up.

"Today we will have the upper hand going into the court," he began to explain with delight tugging at his cheeks.

"There is no way for the Field General to not mention what Cter did yesterday. He was shifting and polishing his seat throughout the rest of the court, as were all the humans in the room. All wanted to erupt into questions about what Cter had seen and what it was she had shown them, but none couldn't. They all saw the fusion, and they all also saw the way Cter collapsed. Even the delegation from Hjearta could tell that it was heat exhaustion. Today we'll also tell them that it was magical exhaustion from Cter putting her entire soul into telling the truth."

Sir Gerson ran his hand across his chin and mouth to hide his growing smile.

"All of today will be the humans trying to make sense of what they saw, giving us the opportunity to influence their thoughts as to what it was they saw. What it was they saw, and more importantly, what it was they felt."

His sturdy hand could not hide his full smile.

"Empathy."

Kurant's brows flinched. "Empathy?" She understood it, but not...really. "Empathy how, exactly?"

"Empathy for what Cter had to go through, and empathy for the monsters. Funnily enough, empathy for a fellow human." Sir Gerson nodded to himself. "For those who haven't met you three, you being considered monsters is only something they've been told. It's not something they've felt or known. I'm sure for many of the humans up in the balconies it was strange to them that three humans and only one monster were representing the monster side of the trial. In a way though that is to our advantage, as the pain you went through hit them deeper than if I were to do it."

A bit like when Kurant was sent down to talk with Cter the morning after that faithful night back in Jarasevo because Kurant was a woman the same as Cter?

"I'm not asking you to reclaim the humanity you've so faithfully left behind for us monsters. What I'm asking you to is to pretend that you're leaning that way. It's not that you'll be lying." Sir Gerson's green shoulders bumped against the robust rim of his shell as he shrugged. "It is our goal, after all, to have the humans see our side of things. To do that easiest and best is to lean on their human sympathy."

He looked to his three Monster Mages to make sure they all understood.

They did, with various levels of appreciation.

"It's for all of the monsters," the Leader of the Royal Guard reminded over the complaining bed as he stood up with strain against it. "If it means that you have to play humans for an evening or two then that shouldn't really be a discussion."

He had a point there. Plenty of ones, in fact.

"I'd suggest adding some barricade magic around your fingers though, Cter." What was a second ago playful excitement drained into genuine concern as Sir Gerson wiped off a small glob of white from Cter's ring finger. He met Cter's eyes with his own gentle ones, nodding to her. "Once this is all over Frioke will help you restore them." He nodded behind him to Kry and Kurant. "They'll help you too, I'm certain."

Cter followed the turtle monster's suggestion, wondering as she did why she didn't do it to begin with. The thin layer of barricade magic to hold in the drops of flesh-like white around her fingers she conjured was quickly filled up, increasing the vague pressure. It helped her feel a bit more as the increased vagueness was pushed differently with the different way she touched at her fingers.

"Speaking of playing human," Kurant said with a slight chuckle. "Why was it that Sarbor gave you salt when you needed water?"

With a few flexed fists to test if the thin layer of barricade magic was enough on her fingers, Cter put her left hand under her half-filled mug for stability. "To help my body keep balance," she answered before drinking some more of the refreshing water.

"Heh," chuckled Kurant again. "If only there was salt for our souls then..."

"Or water, I'd say," commented Kry.

Cter tapped at the underside of her mug with a magic-covered finger. It was a more solid tap than she had before.

"Anything, really..."