"Thank you, my grandchild."
The Princess of the Lineage hung her arm around Manny's shoulder, gripping gently onto the golden ornaments as he lifted her up on her feet from her tumble. The young mage carried her gently and practiced back up on her balance, easing her legs to stand on their own.
"Here...let me make you a new one." His sleeve lit up with a focused glow that concentrated inside his palm, forming a cane similar, but much more opaque in its teal color. It both looked and felt thicker, telling of a more advanced conjuration magic that Manny could summon forth compared to his grandmother. He handed it over while holding the cane's leg, giving his grandmother an easy grip onto the conjured handle. "There you go."
With it in hand, the Princess of the Lineage found her own footing, removing her arm from her grandchild's shoulder with a strengthening breath. "More thanks, grandchild," she thanked again with a warm, grandmotherly smile to the young mage who for the moment was relieved that he had managed to catch his grandmother before she suffered a nasty fall. He didn't seem keen on the fact that her aura hadn't changed during her short fall. "What a wonderful cane you've made."
Manny's already-pink cheeks blushed further as he made a playfully dismissive gesture towards the stars and moon shapes on the cane. "Well...you know..." he fumbled like the child his grandmother kept referring to him as. "Helps me focus it." Almost aloof was he to the people and monsters around him with how flustered he was with his grandmother.
No wonder with how spiked his aura was as he practically dove to catch Rasliela, but still it was as if there was no one else in the room but her and him to the young mage. "I...I gave it more of the new-moon shapes that you like."
"Yes, you did," acknowledged Rasliela while angling the cane to study it better, prompting a worried widening of Manny's eyes for a moment. The old mage ran her naked fingers down the leg of the cane, humming with a pleased delight as her fingers touched at the bumps and crevices of the stars and moon shapes twinkling like they would in the night sky. "A most beautiful cane that you made, Manny. A most beautiful cane that you've made with your own understanding of the magic that you carry on your sleeve."
The praise was too specific for Manny to only be with his grandmother, and with a single blink that snapped him out of his immense relief over that his grandmother was unharmed, he looked around, finding himself in the ball room during the Council of Three Countries once more.
Before he could flinch a startle though, the large, secure hand of his father came down to rest onto his adopted son's shoulder, calming the young mage. "Did you plan this too?" he still asked, even if it was calm. His eyes turned over to the large hat sitting like an out-of-place furniture on the floor halfway between the round table and the vacant hat rack.
"I did not plan for my cane to snap in two because my emotions got the better of me," replied Rasliela with a glance at the faint residue of her broken magic spreading out with each movement of her feet. "I did however plan for you to show your conjuration magic, Manny." She put her hand on the opposite shoulder of where the Hero of Xoff kept his hand. "Please believe me when I say that this is not the situation I would have wanted or planned for." The old mage let her words sink in with her grandchild before she continued. "However, I would like to continue with this now that I have this, if I may?"
The young mage met his grandmother's eyes, open for him to read all that he wanted to.
"I have been the Princess of the Lineage for longer than I have been your grandmother, but that is for me. For you I have been your grandmother for longer, and that I would not want to change, ever. I have had grandchildren before you, and that you know. Those I did love the same as I do you, because you remind me so much of them. At the same time you are you in a way no one else can be, and that I can not begin to explain how happy I am for. I could try, but..."
Rasliela wandered her eyes across the table slowly.
"That will have to be for another time and another day, child, for now I have to be the Princess of the Lineage. I hope you find it in your heart and soul to understand how much this day means for me, and I hope even more that you'll be at my side for this and moving forward. I am still your grandmother, Manny, even if I have to also be the Princess of the Lineage. To you I will always be your grandmother. I will always see you as my grandchild."
Rasliela lifted her hand from Manny's shoulder, stroking his flush cheek. "You're so warm..." she said with an even warmer smile. "Promise me that you will always see me as your grandmother, child." She let the young mage rest his heads weight into her palm. "I will be needing this warmth to keep me strong. I should be afraid, but with you and the others at my side, I instead feel an excitement that I have never experienced before."
Manny nodded loose a tear from his eye that ran down his cheek into his grandmother's palm. With her thumb she wiped the wet path dry before giving it a thorny kiss. "I love you, child."
The young mage wiped away a tear on his own. "And I you, grandma."
Rasliela nodded her deepest thanks, embracing her grandchild with an aura Cter found it impossible not to compare with Romrom's. Even the way Rasliela had wiped away the tear from Manny's cheek. Even the way she sighed wistfully feeling the warm, flush cheek.
Difference was that Romrom hadn't formulated an insurrection to grasp a country's throne based on her hidden lineage. She became the Village Elder through her wisdom and cunning.
And the undermining of the village's hunting grounds which she still thought no one else knew about. Cter did though.
Guess that was why she reacted the way she did when Rasliela told Cter about her secret lineage. Cter was already familiar.
"Do in Jarasevo what I could not, Cter."
"I'm trying, grandma," the Fourth Monster Mage whispered to her memories that came to surface, her shoulders tensing at the memory. "I'm trying with everything I have."
Cter's tensing loosened into curiousness as the Princess of the Lineage seated herself with her grandson's conjured cane laid flat on the table with a physical thud. "Behold!" she made grandiose with both her hands sweeping up and down the length of the cane, presenting it how Barbeqa would a new dish she'd cooked up. "Proof if proof was ever needed that humans have been held back by the Cooperative Connection!"
The air in the ball room was not as excited and jittery as Rasliela would have had it, so she gripped the end of the cane, lifting it up high. With a downwards arc she slammed the cane down with a solid section of teal-colored magic trailing with it down into the round table which shook at the hard impact. The scroll stood in the middle of the table fell over, pushing out thick fog which bumped over the cane, making its glow hazy and diffuse like a lamp through early spring mornings.
That got the attention she wanted.
Attention she stirred wider, sweeping her sleeved arm over the intact cane. "This was once Dr. Sallus' magic," she told, taking in the held-back gasps from the Hjearta delegation.
"Before he merged with the Third Monster Mage Sund to become the feared Fusion, his magic was weak. Lighting his pipe in the afternoons was the height of his magical capabilities, and making but a tiny, minuscule snowflake that melted before it ever existed left him exhausted and frail. A major reason for his pursuit of medicine which he was never ashamed of divulging. His weak magic was not why people came to him, his magic was not what gave him fame. He was never one to solve anything by magic."
Cter did not find any reaction on Sarbor's face.
"So how come then that this cane, conjured by Manny utilizing Dr. Sallus' memories inside his sleeve? How come that Manny utilizing Dr. Sallus' memories, a monster who he never was practically close with, can make magic this robust, clean, and intricate cane with a type of magic that Dr. Sallus was not capable of producing?"
The Princess of the Lineage left a long pause hanging for her rhetorical question, drinking in the curiosity she had begun to stir from opposite the round table. "This magic, this detailed cane made through conjuration magic, is the result of a human mage not beholden to the Cooperative Connection. It is the making of a mage that has come to understand magic in his own human way rather than the monster way which has been gospel and canon ever since the potential for human magic was discovered by the monsters."
Her last word she spoke was slicked and pushed.
"You seem to have forgotten that it was a failure to adhere to the Cooperative Connection that caused the incident at Clinic Hill," chimed Sir Gerson in to deprive the Princess of the lingering pause she wanted to let hang.
He shook his head.
"From what I remember the Xoff delegation at the Noitaidarr Trial was quite heavy on making sure that the Fusion would not have a chance to happen again, going so far as to cause these last couple of years to become filled with friction between the humans and the monsters. Now you advocate for more exploration of the same that you called evil and cursed?"
His head shook more.
"Pray tell, Princess of the Lineage, how come that your cape has turned?" He unfolded one green palm up. "Is it because you have come to understand that the Noitaidarr Trial was nothing but a grab for power and naught to help the world?" Then his other. "Or is it because you have come to understand that us monsters have been, and still are, correct about the nature of human magic and that you need our help to explore it further?"
It would have any other one falter, what Sir Gerson said, but to the monsters' dismay Rasliela only leaned carefully over to tap at the conjured cane rhythmically. "Neither," she answered as if she was asked whether she wanted milk or a squeeze of lemon in her tea. "I have come to understand neither of what you have proposed, Sir Gerson."
She straightened herself up with a delight akin to her getting her tea exactly how she wanted it. "I can admit that the Noitaidarr Trial was a grab for power, that much pride would be uncouth of me should I keep it within me." With a smile like if she had just tasted her favorite tea, the old mage's lips thinned into almost nothing. "But it was a grab for power in the same vein that a drowning man's grab for a rescuing rope is a grab for power. Not out of a greed to acquire more, but out of necessity to save himself."
"Himself?" retorted Sir Gerson whilst bending down his fingers until only one remained. "Just himself?"
With eyes beading with discontent, Rasliela met Sir Gerson's hard look. "Never took you for the pedantic type, Leader of the Royal Guard." She clicked her tongue disapprovingly and sighed out her frustration.
"I never took you for the royal type." The dense amount of pleasantry Sir Gerson spoke with and the width of his sudden smile was astonishing. His bow was the same he did for King Asgore and Queen Toriel "So the feeling is very much mutual, Princess of the Lineage." All the more to show how much the opposite he mean with it all.
The amount of wrinkles gathered by the Princess of the Lineage doing her best to make just-as-wide a smile back to the turtle monster had her cheeks painted with a thousand folds each. "So glad that we can find common ground then," she replied back through teeth clenched hard in her smile. "Quite rare these days." And with that, Rasliela blinked hard away from the monsters, focusing back on the cane before her to try and find where she left off.
An opportunity that the Hjearta delegation took with a devout hunger. "If you are done?" Lerjung proposed. "May we have a word in sideways?" Suddenly it dawned for all that the Hjearta delegation had not said anything in quite some time.
The proposal Rasliela took by the handle, her cane specifically. "I can wait," she let the other human delegation know. With its end between her feet she leaned her chin onto her hands resting on top of the cane's handle. "Go ahead, Hjearta." There was some slight eagerness in her seemingly surrendering way of just giving up the word to Hjearta just like that.
"Thank you very much for that," remarked the Royal Mage of Ice with only a fracture of the over-pleasantry that Sir Gerson and Rasliela had spewed between each other. Even with but a fraction though it was still very inappropriate for what the Council of Three Councils was meant to be.
"If I may too," he said with his eyes turned towards the Hero of Xoff stood with his hand on his son's decorated shoulder. "I take it that this Hjearta delegation no longer is here under the word and oath of the current Xoff king?" his question was direct and cold, more so than would have been expected from him. "Before anything more continues I would like this to be perfectly clear."
Old scars bent under not-as-weathered skin as the Hero of Xoff gathered his words with a furrowed look down and to the side, both onto and past the human doctor sitting next to him. "We in this delegation want to do what is best for our country and fellow countrymen," said the deep voice with a straightened back and his full weight behind his words.
"And for that we believe that the Royal Lineage of Xoff should be reinstated to be the most effective with bringing back hope to our country. We also believe that should the Royal Lineage be reinstated that we can act more effectively on the decisions made here in this council. The proposals we have made have been in good faith and should we be allowed to, we will put all of our hearts into making them come true as expedient as possible."
But none of their souls?
"These last decades have been hard on Xoff," continued the hero with his furrow deepening with pain. "And it is the duty of those that can to make it better. To take the fear that accumulated into the Fusion and refuse into something better." His hand motioned towards the conjured cane Rasliela leaned her chin onto. "Refuse the fear the Fusion brought upon us!" Then his hand gripped over his heart. "Refuse the curse it dared bring upon us!" Then finally his hand swept in a sharp, quick arc across the table. "And refuse to be held back by those who think they know us better than themselves!"
Terri waited patiently for the hero's loud voice to settle against the curtained walls. "You do understand that this means that Hjearta will be forced to respond in kind to this threat towards the Xoff throne, right?" He held his eyes with the Hero of Xoff, who nodded once and slowly.
"Fenkeep Castle will not take lightly a rebellion within Xoff," added Lerjung with her eyes hard on Rasliela. "It might spark something within Hjearta too, even if it will be less...motivated."
"May I relay a message to the Hjearta Royals then so that they may take it a bit more lightly?" said Rasliela with eyes softer than Lerjung's. "To let them know that they should not be worried about my retaking of the Xoff throne as I am merely correcting a wrong. Yours have legitimacy stretching centuries back which I am to reclaim anew in Xoff."
A small wall of fog was painted by Terri swiping his raised palm in front of him. "We can not do that." He looked through it, between the sparkling of the shards of ice spread throughout the fading wall. "For you do understand where we will be standing should you escalate things within Xoff?"
With how calmly Rasliela straightened herself up from her lean onto her conjured cane's handle, it seemed like she was very much aware of that. She held her eyes onto the Royal Mage of Ice, studying him and his aura. After a few moments she moved her old eyes down to the frozen parchment stood on its rolled-up edge with a slow blink. She breathed in, exhaling out with a soft melody to her breath. "It seems like we have done this item on the list to conclusion now," she let the room know with a titter. "Mayhaps the rest of the items will go a bit smoother?"
The rest of the…
Wait, she wanted to continue? She wanted to keep the council going after revealing herself to be the Princess of the Lineage?
"Yes." The princess in question nodded after Cter's confused aura swept her by like a hard gust. "I want what is best for Xoff, and that means following through with the items on the list. We have not stopped representing Xoff, and we will bring what has been discussed here to Noitaidar Castle. Should the people choose the current occupant on the throne then it would only be petty of me to not hand over what has been said here at the Council of Three Countries. Would just have been a waste of a journey, really."
"Mhm?" nodded Terri, half-convinced. "And we would not want to have wasted a journey here either." His naked finger tapped on his nose while thinking. "I don't see any direct issues in continuing the discussion on the remaining issues. It'll be more a question as to who puts them into practice." He glanced sideways at the horizon out the windows. "The potentially new route through the mountain pass being once of them?"
"Of course," said Rasliela with her sideways eye blinking over to the monsters for a short spell. "What is best for the Xoff people, after all."
It took Cter's entire being not to make a rude gesture towards the Princess. She could tell the same was for her colleagues in the monster delegation, all stood clutching their hands with hidden teeth grinding like stone mills.
"You shouldn't have said what you did, Gerson," uttered Kry subtly from the corner of his mouth as the Royal Mage of Ice brought up the next item on the list. Suffice to say, discussing which type of Hjearta cheese would be exempt from being declared luxury goods did not weigh as much as the recently closed item did.
"I know," sighed the turtle monster with a pinch between his eyes. His other hand found his round tin can from which he picked a dried Golden Flower petal.
"But damn did it feel good."