The stench of burnt leather and hair stung in both Cter's eyes and nose as she recoiled away from the extreme heat that engulfed Kry's left arm. The magical flames reminiscent of King Asgore's magic reached high above the First Monster Mage, stopping just short of licking the white roof with its roaring blaze.

As Cter stood cowering and covered with her cloak that she threw between her and Kry's torched left arm, the extreme heat that had grated at her cheek was suddenly gone, replaced by a chill throughout her entire being that caused her to inhale the burnt smell with a shocked gasp. Immediately she coughed it out, only to find herself greedily sucking in more of the foul stench. The harsh cold that surged through her from within her soul did more to frighten her though, and she tucked her cloak tighter around her.

"No...no...no..."

Tighter, but the cold still plagued her.

"No...he didn't..."

Still gripped at her soul.

"He couldn't..."

And her heart.

"He couldn't have..."

It had her quivering with the realization of the emptiness that grew like a void within her soul.

"Kry?"

Where was he?

"You did..."

Where was his aura?

Peeking out of her cloak, she saw the First Monster Mage leaning heavily over the prosecution table with his right palm flat against the table. His fingers scraped bright scars in the old wood, filled in with drops of heavy sweat that curled off a furrowed brow and lips sucked back with pain. From his hard chin was knocked off even-thicker drops of sweat that bounced into small droplets on the gold-rimmed glasses hanging by their chain-linked thread just underneath Kry's chin.

"Court Speaker," he forced out through teeth gritted hard and tightly. "May I–"

The dark, slicked-back hair striped with silver rustled into half a mess as Kry jutted his head to the side with a pained grunt. His fingers curled harder on the table, deepening the scars his nails carved. Like puddles on a road after rain his sweat filled the scars in until they were overflowing.

But where had the road taken him?

Far, far away, it had. So far away that Cter could not sense any of his aura. She had felt it shrink rapidly, like a snowflake landing on a hot stove. Not even the steam that the violent reaction caused was anywhere to see or sense for Cter. It had gone away. Kry's aura had gone away.

Completely.

With fearful blinks, she looked down at her friend's left arm.

"Kry...no..."

A naked arm, devoid of a sleeve covering it. Strips of burnt slivers clung to his skin smoothed-out by the erupting fire magic with no magical lines visible. Each anguished shake had the flakes and strips of burnt leather falling off like snow, littering the mosaic below him in a distressed pattern. It could just as well have been blood dropping down onto the white mosaic floor for how severely Kry's hurt was showing all over him.

All over him.

Except in his aura.

Seeing Kry but not his aura had Cter feeling ill. It had confusion whirling within her stomach and soul, upsetting them both. She looked to the large glass pitcher of water on the prosecutions table, but as she did, a wide streak of dark swept past in front of her, dunking its entirety inside the glass pitcher as best it could.

A trail of slowly falling, burnt scraps followed in the wake of the sweeping motion Kry threw his left arm through. The pitcher water he dunked his arm in was quickly stained like tea from the loosened pieces floating away from his arm.

"Court Speaker," Kry tried once more while breathing sharply in through his teeth again. As he spoke he tried to push more of his arm into the glass pitcher, but failed to do so. He only spilled more water from the pitcher all over the prosecutions table. Whatever important documents he drenched weren't as important as what he had done.

Cter reached out with her own left arm surrounded with a cold cloud of ice magic. As she neared Kry's arm, he coughed. "No!" There was a growl within his voice, rumbling deeply. It scared Cter, and she retreated her arm to herself, clutching it like hers was about to engulf in flames too. With the fire within Kry's eyes it might as well have happened.

A mere second later, the painful fire in his eyes was blinked away to be replaced with a hollowed frighten. His breathing quickened, shortening in the process. The brown eyes began to shake as much as his left arm did, rapidly shifting over Cter's face, but failing to recognize. "No," he repeated, quietly to himself.

The cold empty within Cter had chilled enough within Kry for him to feel the same.

The same, yet so much more than Cter could even have begun to imagine.

"I...I can't..." stumbled out of the paling lips with a fear and helplessness that Cter had never seen within Kry ever before. She watched without another breath of her own as he looked to Kurant, but felt nothing. Then to Sir Gerson, still without nothing. Wherever he looked, wherever he turned, his glasses whipped around the tensed tendons pushing out of his neck like large sails. He could not back away from the feeling, for it was within him. Each direction he stumbled he regretted the step. Each regretted step his body lagged behind his step.

Until he collapsed into his chair, knocking out the remaining water from the glass pitcher like the roaring spring rivers overflowing with melted snow and ice.

"I..." uttered Kry as his colleagues took hold of him to prevent him from falling out of his own chair. "I can't feel...any of you." His mouth and tongue did not want to speak anything more, stopping his words in his throat. Even as he swallowed them away, the words had to be said. "It's c-cold." Drops formed on his chin once more. "It's so c-cold and alone." None were drops of sweat though. "W-Where are y-you?" They were all tears. "K-King A-Asgore?" Tears that poured off as Kry looked to his left arm drenched in wet splotches of burnt leather and hair. "Y-You're...gone..."

The First Monster Mage was no longer a mage.

"It feels… My soul feels..." Kry swallowed hard. His normally sharp features had puffed up from the sweat and tears drenching his face. He did not feel as himself without his aura, and with his slightly bloated face he began to not look as himself too. "Like I'm standing in an empty basement that goes on for forever. It was so full. It had King Asgore there with me. He's gone. He's gone! My King! My King, where–"

Ring-wearing fingers curled over Kry's quaking shoulder, tightening hard. "Kry," addressed Kurant with a stoic rumble. "You told me you thought this through." Her words did not reach him initially, forcing her to turn the inert Monster Mage towards her herself. With a hard furrow she elicited a response.

A gasp-like whimper.

Kry was like a child without parents. Cter recognized it from when she shared memories with Idyll. The complete and utter destruction of the world around Kry, and that the slow dawning that it was a reality he would have to live in from then on. Sure, they could get him a new sleeve once back at Jarasevo Castle, but that wouldn't be for a month and more ahead.

He would have to live with his shattered reality, as well as the knowledge that he did it to himself. He made the choice to burn his sleeve which he'd worn for years beyond counting. He made the choice to burn away King Asgore who he'd been keeping close to his soul for equal amount of countless years. He made that choice without hesitation, summoning King Asgore's flames without any thoughts to what might befall him. He knew it was necessary, and so he made the choice.

But...why?

"You're human now," said Kurant with her eyes steeled against Kry's. "You're human now. Remember what we discussed. You'll protect the monsters, even as a human. You were determined to, weren't you?"

There was a glaze of not recognizing which flashed across Kry's drenched eyes. A moment of him not knowing in the slightest what it was Kurant was talking about. He searched in her eyes, but did not find anything. "I..." he again uttered through his complete dismay and distress. "I did?"

Then, another glazed flash shoot through the windows to Kry's soul so distant and horrified. A flash that had him gulp both air and phlegm with a gasp of shocked air. He put his soaked hand over Kurant's sleeve. "I did," he said to himself while clutching at the Delta Rune on Kurant's sleeve. "I did. Yes, yes I did!"

With how pale he looked it was a miracle that he managed to stand up on his own two feet. It was a wobbly maneuver that he attempted, with him having to take support on both the table and the backrest of his chair for him to be able to keep his own weight upright.

"Court Speaker," said Kry for the third time as a human. His back was straightened to his full, proud length, yet his voice still wavered. He was speaking through his pain, and not with it behind him. "I request the floor as a human. I request the floor to join with the Field General and give him the proper dialogue he so much wants." He flinched at not feeling his friends backing him up, darting his eyes side to side behind him to Kurant and Cter. They were with him, of course they were.

They were as foreign to him not having an aura as he was though, so they did not realize that they were giving a magically deaf Monster Mage praise and support via magic. Once they saw Kry's desperate fling of his eyes towards them though, they came to realize, and both touched at his shoulders to brush off some weight and add some of their own strength to them so that he would remain strong and vigilant.

He would need it to go against the Field General. As a human. As a–

"You don't understand anything, don't you?"

The Field General held a disappointed gaze at Kry. A focused, immovable gaze that Kry held fast against, but not without effort. "You don't understand that this?" The Field General motioned with a loose hand at Kry. "That this is the embodiment of the issues I've raised about the deep-rooted connection that has turned out to be a lie all along?"

Kry's left arm tensed as the Field General whipped his loose hand at the burnt-off scraps of King Asgore's gifted sleeve.

"You Monster Mages are said to be monsters, yet you stand up like a human against humans. You are supposed to be so magically connected that your souls are considered monster, which in the monsters' eyes makes you one of them. How can you still accept that when the human soul that you yourself have testified was the reason for the fusion was from one of you? Does that not go against all that you stand for? All that you represent? Is that not something that should have tipped you off that something was amiss with your titles? Do you believe in the lie of the Cooperative Connection so much that you believe yourself to be incapable of doing any wrong? If the Cooperative Connection can only be for good, then you, those exemplary humans chosen to embody the Cooperative Connection, can do no wrong?"

Before Kry could stop her, Cter flew up out of her chair. "It was me being incapable of saving Dr. Sallus and Sund that formed the fusion!" she reminded harshly with a cutting slice in the air in front of her. So violent was her arm's motion that her combined braid whipped behind her. "I did wrong!"

The Field General ignored Cter as if he did not hear her. "It is however not a question of being incapable of doing wrong, nor doing wrong which goes against the very doctrine you embody. Too err is human, and it is this one canonical fact that governs this world. The fallibility of humans is what makes us think. It is because we can not feel each other the same as the monsters can that have forced us to trust. Trust exists so that we do not have to think. It exists so that us humans do not need to be always thinking about the actions of others. As monsters, they know. They know the thinking of others. They know the other's reasons, and understand that."

With a shake of his head, the Field General's expression turned grim and serious, away from disappointed.

"They understand each other to such a degree that they do not understand the weight of trust, and more importantly, the weight of trust that has been broken."

A long, dead-silent beat passed by. Even the outside flowing in through the large, opened windows became quiet as it rolled in.

"Trust broken follows being forced to think. Being forced to think on a basis of being wronged. There is none a human, alive or dead, that has ever wanted to think. It takes effort, energy, and time of day to stop being a leaf enjoying the gentle motion of a calm river and to become an irregular rock sitting in the middle of the river splashing water all around it."

Suddenly, as by the will of the Field General's words alone, the trickle of the spilled jug of water became loud inside the court room.

"You say that you are a human now, Monster Mage Kry, yet you still ignore that trust has been broken on such a monumental scale that people young and old will all begin to think. This fundamental lie that human magic can only be summoned through a Cooperative Connection between a human and a monster is so integral to our world that there's none who is not aware of it or affected by it. This fundamental cornerstone of our mixed society that holds monsters up to such an infallible height of having to be treated cooperatively is what the monsters themselves mortared as something so fundamental as a cornerstone to build this mixed society from. It is what humans have lived with for generations, with each new one having a stronger affinity to the magic dictated and helmed by the monsters."

The trickling water faded into but slow drops.

"And it's a lie."

Slower.

"It's all a lie."

Yet slower.

"And it is the monsters that have lied to us."

Until it stopped.

"It is the monsters that have broken this trust that they have paraded with to be the salvation of humankind. It is the monsters that have forced us that have noticed this lie to think. To think about what it means to have such an integral part of human life which the monsters have urged and insisted upon be a lie the monsters have pushed in such a way that we humans had no other choice but to think of them as only cooperative."

Stopped despite that the prosecutions' table was still drenched.

"How do you not understand this, Monster Mage? How is it that you believe that you can burn off your sleeve and call yourself a human just like that? You have forgotten what it means to be a human. You have forgotten what it means to put complete trust in another. To not know what it is that the other one thinks and believes in, yet still be willing to put your trust with them. You have felt throughout your many years as a Monster Mage, but you have never thought. A human is not a way of thinking, for even a human feels. She does not feel through her soul though. She does not feel what the other is feeling, and vice versa. The only dialogue she can have with another is via words, and those can be twisted."

The weathered brow of the Field General furrowed.

"A trait that both species share, it seems."

It remained low as he let his breathing roll out to envelop the entire court room.

"You Monster Mages have abandoned your humanity not by rejecting your last names and by dedicating your souls to be the defenders of monsterkind, but by forgetting what it means to be forced to think when your trust has been shattered beyond salvaging. You have forgotten what it entails to know that what you took for granted was someone else taking advantage of you. Of your friends, of your parents, of your children, of your village, your town, your country, your people, and all that are fallible because we can not truly know who the other really is."

As did his inhale.

"We can only trust."

The Field General stood with his presence absolute in the court room. He stood waiting for Kry to say something in rebuttal. He welcomed it. He wanted to be proven wrong. It brought him no joy bringing up the truth, neither when he first revealed it or when he had to explain it deeper.

He did not stand as a victor or a hero, but as a desperate man grasping at as many straws as the Monster Mages did to try and save all. It was not something he could ignore though, for doing so would be ignoring that everyone that he had met and that he knew and loved have had their entire life forcefully changed without their knowledge the same as he was with the fusion.

What differed him from the Monster Mages was that he felt the hurt from the trust that was broken.

And they didn't.

That Rasliela allowed Cter to feel in the Field General's meek aura.

If only to further bring home that she could not feel anything from Kry's.

"Court Speaker."

All of what Cter was allowed to feel was according to the Field General, however.

"I ask you, for the fourth time, to join the Field General up on the floor."

And not the Monster Mage who had just separated himself from a connection he had worn for over a century.

"I ask you, as a human, to speak to him as he speaks to us."

A connection that the Field General could never understand. A connection that exemplified all the good the supposed lie had brought. The good that the Field General turned a blind eye towards, refusing to acknowledge in his internal hurt from his changed soul. A hurt that he could not separate from himself, and instead combed over all.

"Court Speaker!" Kry demanded with a hard push of the flat of his palms down into the table. His entire weight shook the shallow layer of water into a small fountain.

"You have no right to demand like you do," replied the Field General while placing himself between Kry and the Court Speaker.

Kry ignored the Hero of Xoff. "Answer my request, Court Speaker!" he threw over the Field General with a hand squeezed dry. "Give me the chance to defend those that I need to defend!" The remaining scraps on Kry's extended left arm seemed to shiver off in fear of the fire he still could rage despite his lack of magical lines. He spoke purely out of his heart, just as strong and filled with determination as his soul had been.

Equally human as he was monster.

The First Monster Mage.

"You may speak, Kry."

He nodded, "Thank you," and walked around the wettened table.

The court room gathered a collective, held breath as Kry, with his robe's left arm trailing small pieces of soot behind him, approached the Field General stood glaring hard at the Monster Mage who'd abandoned his humanity ages ago, and his monster side just a few minutes ago.

"How long have you been this, Field General?"

The human grimaced.

"How long have you had this within you?"

He clenched a hand at his side.

"How long have you been the Hero of Xoff?"

He refused.

"I know what it is that is eating at you from inside. Why it is that you are waking up in the middle of the night with sweat colder than the darkest of nights in the middle of the desert that spans the middle of this country."

He...peeked.

He peeked at the Monster Mage nearing him with an emotionless expression, stopping just far enough that their breaths wouldn't touch.

"I know why, Eldest of Clan Shujaa."

A shocked gasp turned harder and sharper as the Field General's stunned flinch was enveloped by the burnt and unburnt arms of Kry. A tender caress that was as tender as it was sudden, with none daring to react for fear on not having enough to react with for what followed.

"I know that you are scared, Shujaa."

Or what...didn't follow?

"I know that you are scared for what your title means. An exemplary title that you are the first one to wear and that you need to make sure will be one that others after you will wear with more importance than you do, for otherwise it'll undo all that it stands for."

What didn't follow wasn't a violent debate.

"You are scared because of the fusion. You are scared because you have seen more than anyone should ever have seen, and you are the one that needs to speak for those who can not. You need to carry this. You have both chosen it and been chosen to carry it. You're strong, which is why both you and your people chose you."

What didn't follow wasn't anger or vicious words.

"I am not here to say that you are wrong."

What followed was only gentle comforting. The same comforting King Asgore would do.

"I'm here, as a human, to tell you that it is okay."

For while Kry had severed his connection with the Monster King.

"You are allowed to be afraid, Hero of Xoff."

He still knew the Monster King within his heart.

"Cry."

His heart which he shared with the Field General.

"Cry, Eldest Shujaa, Hero of Xoff."

Who trusted him completely.

"For all of our sake."