"Oh..."
Cter turned away from the half-filled shelf two rows away from the top of the bookcase she was arranging with volumes of fiction she had managed to order by the weight. She saw a pair of squiggly horns poking up from the spiral staircase entering up from the wooden floor in the middle of the cone-shaped room, followed by deep green fabric that looked to tighten itself up.
"Oh, that was embarrassing."
The sound of the loud creak from one of the steps the jester monster took died down after having caught the Monster Mage's attention both with how loud it was, but also by the shameful inhale through gritted lips.
"But why here?"
The squiggly horns bent down behind the spiraling pillars of the wooden railing around the staircase from below. A few dull knocks had the green head and shoulders poke up from the staircase again, shaking with furrowed confusion.
"Why creak here out of all places?"
A finger came up to scratch at the fabric-like head, pushing down folds over the star-stitched eyes.
"Is it because she is–"
"Yes, Donial?" greeted Cter like a sharp knife into the jester monster's would-be ear, causing a small yelp from the green-clad monster who turned his head slowly towards the Monster Mage tapping the edge of the spine of a heavy book about snails she had just inserted into the nearest bookshelf.
"Ah, Cter!" the jester monster greeted back with his cloaked arms wide and his sewn mouth even wider in a smile. With only a raised eyebrow as a reply his hands came together with an anxious rub that had him suddenly aware that he was standing underneath a large, cast-iron chandelier lit with magical flames that could at any time migrate towards the rope holding it from crashing over his head.
"May perhaps that you would like the rope to be changed to a sturdy chain instead for the chandelier?" he suggested friendly with a drop of sweat pouring out his fabric-like forehead with a darkened stain. "The rope was meant to be temporary until Fang Shuey deduced that it would work permanently."
The Monster Mage lifted her eyes towards the large light fixture where she had conjured up some magical lights which cast a ring of shadow across the lower part of the bookshelves arranged around the inner rim of her tower extension.
There were still some bookshelves she had not managed to begin filling with books, but she had no real hurry to. It had become a nice yearly tradition for her to spend a day or two organizing and reorganizing her bookshelves with the new books she had managed to request throughout the last year.
It helped clear her head for a short while.
"Wouldn't a cast-iron chain be too heavy for the roof?" Cter asked as she returned to placing a neighboring book about Hjearta glaciers next to the heavy book of snails. "Don't want it to risk it collapsing because of me wanting consistency."
"Oh it won't do that," said Donial with confidence while bending down and up where he stood, producing irregular creaks from the wooden staircase. "The added weight of the chains won't be much more than the rope since the chains will be thinner." After a few bends he seemed to have found the exact spot on the step where the creak originated from. "Hmm..." he hummed to himself before turning to Cter with a thoughtful furrow over his cross-stitched eyes. "You've never noticed this?" the jester monster asked while creaking the stair with his foot some more.
"Which step?" asked Cter back while pushing herself up on her toes to try and look at which step Donial meant exactly.
"The...fifth step from the top," counted Donial. "Fifth step from the top in the middle of the step." He creaked once more to further prove. "You never noticed before?"
Cter shook her head. "Not really, no." Before Donial could guess as to why exactly she answered his curious would-be question. "I take two steps at a time."
Donial looked down the staircase with heightened eyes. "Both up and down?" An impressed nod had his squiggly horns hiding perfectly behind the spiral-carved pillars of the protective railing. "I wouldn't dare with this steepness, but I guess your legs are longer than mine."
That was true.
"In any case though," the jester monster said with a creak-less step up, "I'll have someone add a supportive plank underneath this step by the week's end." He pushed himself up the last step with one of his green hands on the top of the railing. "Can see if there are any other steps that need reinforcement too on the way down." He smiled as if his offer was very kind of him to give.
"Good thing to do before anyone steps through it," Cter agreed while reading the title of a book with a blue-woven sleeve.
"My thoughts exactly, Monster Mage," praised the jester monster while taking a long step out from underneath the rope-supported chandelier. The ringed shadow it cast made a wide stripe on his stomach.
"Actually, come to think about that," raised Cter before realizing that she shouldn't really think about it out loud. "Eh, nevermind." The creaking step did indeed explain why Kurant had asked Cter to help her down the stone staircase down to the castle last time she visited with some books for Cter to add to her tower extension. She must have stepped onto the creaking step on the wooden staircase up to her tower and worried that it was her knee brace that made the noise.
Good thing too as it turned out that Kurant needed a belt replaced, so no harm done due to the loose step. Quite the opposite in fact.
"Something else that has been making noise when it shouldn't?" pried Donial even though Cter waved her hand dismissively. "I mean, while I'm here?"
Actually, come to think about that. "Why are you here?" Cter replied with a bit too much hurry in her voice. She cleared it out with a small cough into her hand. "What brings you here, Donial?" came out a bit better.
The jester monster pointed down the staircase he had just creakily ascended with a green arm seemingly summoned from the dark shadow the chandelier cast over him. "The reading podium which you requested is standing outside the door to your study." As he bowed apologetically his face seemed to both absorb and meld together with the shadow from the chandelier which he bowed his head into.
"Please accept my humblest apologies for it being backlogged for so long." The stitching on his eyes and lips visibly tightened as he raised his head up again. "These last few months have been quite hectic to prepare for the Council of Three Countries so it was unfortunately shunted down the priority list."
"It's fine." Really, it was. Cter didn't really order it out of her own want, so to speak. If so, she would have requested one shortly after her tower extension was finished and not years after the fact. She ordered one for her tower extension because she saw one at one of the jeweler guilds she and Kry had visited to assert how the luxury goods ban had affected monster and human relations in artisan crafts.
It was all she took away from that visit, to be perfectly honest.
Not physically though, for that would have only worsened the relations further. She knew that she wanted one after the visit though, but even with that it took another year or so before she figured that she wanted one enough to make a requisition for it.
Roughly at the time that Priestess Frioke got one for her study, funnily enough.
But who was to say, really?
"Been a lot in the backlog apart from your podium as well," commented Donial with a hefty exhale, after which he went to the closest bookshelf to inspect closer. "Everything was shunted to the side quicker than Fang Shuey sweeping aside my initial plans when the council was to be planned for." He pivoted a book with a slight-green cover like a chair leaned back on its hind legs.
"I was in the middle of making a new wardrobe for the First Monster Mage when Fang Shuey grabbed at my horn and pulled me away to make plans with Sir Gerson about what I would be working on for the coming months until, and including, the Council of Three Countries. I'm thankful now for the opportunity and trust they had in me to refurbish with opulent luxury beyond what I've ever done before in two very distinct styles, human and monster." He pushed back the book into its slot with a careful flick. "But singe my soul, I was not thankful at all during the whole ordeal. Golly me, no."
Cter waited until after Donial's stitching had calmed down before saying something. "The flags that inverted between the Hjearta and Xoff colors were quite impressive," she lauded while slotting in a book about the lakes around Jarasevo to finish a row.
A bashful huff seeped out the calmed stitching forming Donial's lips. "Took me a while to figure out how to have the colors from one flag not be see-through for the other, but yeah, thank you, Monster Mage."
Just take the compliment, come on.
"If anything I have more security in my position now," the jester monster told while chuckling out his bashfulness with a scratch on his cheek. He paused to search for what to say afterwards, casting a glance to some of the book spines neighboring the one he had pivoted with his finger.
The gentle, non-flickering light of Cter's magic hovering above the candle holds in the human-designed chandelier accentuated the wrinkles that formed around his star-stitched eyes, as if the fabric hadn't been washed in weeks. "Many laurels I've been granted this month between the council and now, even some land not far from Jarasevo which I plan to build something so wonderful for Idyll and I that the Monster Royals will be envious enough to grant me another piece of land so that they might live there instead."
Cter exhaled with amusement. "That so?" She noticed a slight relief in the jester monster's aura following her amused exhale. "Haven't received any land meself, actually," Cter returned in jest, but coming to a rest for a few seconds on that thought. "I haven't received anything, actually." Not true, but the gist of it was. Not to brag, but she was a Monster Mage. Surely her, and the two others, would be the first one to gain some land for their deeds and service, right? Her head turned towards Donial with a movement akin to the second handle of a clock along with a furrowed expression. "How come not?"
Donial rubbed the tip of one of his squiggly horns while he looked away with another black spot of sweat beading on his forehead. "Because..." he said before being confident in continuing. "Because you're employed by the Castle."
The Castle? Jarasevo Castle? "The Monster Royals, you mean?" Cter retorted with a wave of the short end of a book about Vulkin-assisted cooking. "I'm employed by the Monster Royals."
The stitching on Donial's lips stretched to the point that they risked to come loose with how unsure his smile was.
An unsure smile that was transmitted over to Cter. "I'm not?" She slotted in the book about Vulkin-cooking into a slot that was to tight for it without looking. "I'm not employed by the Monster Royals?"
Donial shook his head.
"But then..."
Who was she employed by?
"There is a..." began Donial, but cut himself off immediately to think about it a bit more so that he was telling it correctly. His aura was awash with barely understood confusion when he opened the stitching that was his mouth. "There is an entity of sorts that stands above the Monster Royals called the Castle, you see."
She didn't, but go on.
"The Castle is what gives the Monster Royals their duty, essentially." His head was tugged aside by a tangent that bubbled up beyond his control. "The Castle might come to be renamed the Delta Rune in the future since King Asgore and Queen Toriel's families have now become one with their marriage and ascension to the Royal Purple, but that's..."
He waved generally over Cter's many bookshelves. "It's something that'll be for later books to write down as history and will probably be hell on the record keepers to translate over once that happens." He bit down to stop the tangent. "But again, nothing for you to worry about."
O...kay…
After an inhale and a quick lick of his stitched lips, Donial found his original thread of thought. "The Castle represents monsterkind in a business sense, so to speak. Think of it as...a...company?" The jester let the notion settle so that he could feel about it. "Yes, a company of sorts. The Monster Royals are the owners of that company and thus speak for it and make decisions for it, but they serve it, and thus they serve monsterkind."
Cter nodded with confidence. "I understand."
But she didn't.
"The Monster Royals made the choice to make you a Monster Mage, but you do not serve them." Donial's mouth opened again for another tangent, but he bit down even harder. "You answer to them because they are the owners but your title is granted by the Castle to let you serve monsterkind in the way you see fit." He breathed out the rest of the tangent, waving it away from him with his hands.
"It is the point of the Monster Mages, after all. Neither King Asgore nor Queen Toriel can make you monsters in the eyes of monsterkind, only the Castle can. Only monsterkind itself can make you monsters, not their rulers. Similarly, you Royal Councilors protect monsterkind by your own unique perspectives complimenting the Monster Royals', and thus you need to be on equal terms legally when it comes to hierarchy of the Castle."
"Ah, yes," Cter pretended to understand. "Legally, yes."
"Yes, legally," Donial snapped up quickly, startling Cter with the fact that she was somewhat correct in her shot in the dark actually hitting something. "It's all in the foundation of how Monster Country became a country, and why you Monster Mages are legally monsters."
Legally monsters? "So that means that I can be illegally a monster?"
Pained expressions flowed just below Donial's fabric-like skin, converging towards his stitching like quick-moving bubbles.
"It's fine!" coughed Cter before the jester monster could try and explain something he clearly dreaded to. "It's...it's whatever. I can just read about it if I want."
Golly gee, she didn't though.
"Right," Donial breathed out with a cleansing shake of his head. "To go back to your original question." Whatever that was again. "You being employed by the Castle means that you can not be granted anything, for legally there isn't anyone above you. There's only the Castle above you, which is monsterkind that you serve and protect the interest of. You can not be granted any land because there isn't anyone to grant you it."
Okay...
"Except yourself."
...Okay.
How...intriguing.
"The reason I can be granted land by the Monster Royals is because I am employed here at Jarasevo Castle by the Monster Royals on commission for my services."
"Yes, yes."
That was all very good and all. Good on him and so on.
But…
"What was that about me being able to grant myself land?" asked Cter with a bit too much curiosity in her aura. "Is that something I can do?" More so. "Is that something I can do without the Monster Royals' permission?"
Only hypothetically, of course. Very much only hypothetically, of course. Now that Cter had found out that she was legally employed by all of monsterkind it would be good to follow with asking what exactly her atypical employment afforded her to do.
So that she wouldn't accidentally do something outside her legal boundaries, of course.
Only within them.
The contemplative, aghast expression that began to unravel Donial's stitching showed that he was beginning to regret what he had told. "Right, see, um..." he juggled with uncertainty, eventually closing his mouth with a pinch of his hand. "You...shouldn't really make decisions based on what I've been saying." It was said more as a defense rather than friendly advice.
"This is my reading of things, and since I only read as far as to be confident in me being hired on commission being the best choice for me," his inhale was filled with building regret, "maybe please do not tell anyone else that I said that you could grant yourself land?" It was unmistakably a plea that he forced out as close to a whimper as possible. Added to it was his put-together hands begging for the Monster Mage answer only to the Castle and monsterkind to heed the monster carpenter hired on commission by the Monster Royals. "Please?"
"But hypothetically," Cter replied back in obvious greed. Her taps on her lips with her finger fooled no one that she was asking out of curiosity of her mind and soul. "I am able to grant myself land should I want to because who would there be to deny me?"
The jester monster's pleading smile turned panicking, forcing a hard swallow down his throat, disappearing into the high collar of his green robe. "J-Just y-you," he said with a shrug. "Would o-only be you yourself that can s-stop you from d-doing that."
That…
That was a good point, actually.
"That's true," said Cter with an angled turn of her head and a deepened brow. Her realization sank in so much so quick for her that the magical lights dimmed for a brief moment like sudden, brief overcast. "That's true, indeed."
It would be entirely on her to both make the choice and, more importantly, give the reason as to why she would have to give herself said land, or whatever else she would decide was important for her to have as a tireless servant of all monsterkind. She wouldn't be given the land, per-se, as it would be more her taking it away with a reason behind it that she could only hope that others would agree with.
She had the legal right to do it.
But was she in the right to do it?
"Heh..." Donial failed to keep in after seeing Cter sink into thought like a cast anchor without line or chain attached. "It was half the reason why I read up on it and chose to be employed by commission instead. I mean, I wouldn't become a Royal Councilor by leading the refurbishing of the castle, but still."
"The Castle?" Cter asked to clarify.
"No, the castle."
"Ah, right. Refurbishing of the Castle is what you told about the Delta Rune?"
"More or less," agreed the jester with a bouncing nod to his sides. "By being hired on commission by the Monster Royals I can be granted things without having to consult myself if it is okay to be given it and have it in my possession. There is someone above me that takes responsibility of it, and I just have to do the job good enough to earn it."
He had to push his head away from glancing down at the fifth step from the top of the wooden staircase. "It makes things simpler for me in these complex times, and that I feel is worth having to read for over half a day to try and at least get a vague concept of how things work here in the castle."
Wait!
"Vague?" Cter blurted with a skeptical hand in front of her. "This is just a vague idea of it all that you've told me?"
"Well..." struggled the jester monster torn between his pride and his better judgment, "I'd rather say that it is vague so that you don't take it as gospel. You do understand why, right?"
She wasn't gonna do it.
She wasn't…
She…
"Alright, I do," admitted the Monster Mage with a defeated exhale. "I understand." This time she did. "I shouldn't have entertained the thought."
Donial didn't say anything, but him purposefully hiding his aura the best he could told just as well that he agreed with the notion. "Something you can do though," he perked up on with an excited waggle of his finger. "Do you remember the dress Idyll was wearing during the Council of Three Countries?"
The one that she so desperately wanted to show her human brother? "Yes, I do. Only caught a brief glimpse of it, but it sure looked fantastic on her." She remembered something else about it too. "You were trying to pull some strings for it, she mentioned."
An embarrassed, slightly shameful blush painted pink onto the green fabric-like cheeks. "Yeah, you see...um..."
Wild guess. "It has something to do with the Castle spelled as a proper noun?" Just to make sure that the two were on the same page.
"The dress is the property of the Castle, yes. Because of–" Donial almost bit through his lip to stop another bout of large, intricate tangents about the fundamental legality that the castle of the Castle stood upon seemingly more than it stood upon Castle Hill.
"Because of reasons. And because I am employed by the Monster Royals they would have to grant me the dress which they can't since it was gifted to the Castle and not the Monster Royals and therefor can only be gifted and not granted as that would be stepping down the...um...thought and spirituality of the action. On top of that, since I am employed by the Monster Royals they can only grant me things and not gift me because gifting I do not have to pay a tax for which is different from being exempt from tax by being granted something and–"
Cter put up the flat of her hand before Donial talked himself into just a deflated pile of green fabric. "Can't you just ask them to give it to Idyll directly?"
Another inhale filled the jester monster with air necessary to explain. "She is employed by the Monster Royals too and thus it will be granting to her too." A shallower inhale than his previous ones. "So the only way would be if you, employed by the Castle, which gives you the right to gift the dress should you deem it necessary for monsterkind, to give it to Idyll, who you don't have any legal ties towards." He pointed across his chest towards Jarasevo. "When you two lived in the city she was the only one with her name on the lease to hire the apartment you two lived in so that won't haunt you."
...Good?
"And how much did you have to read for that?" Cter had to ask in response.
"Another half a day," nodded Donial factually. "I really want her to have the dress."
Understandable, and fully so.
"I'll...um...see what I can do then." Cter agreed with a nod of her own in return.
"Yes," said Donial with one hand placed on the railing. "That was...eh...the reason I came up here to talk to you, actually, so..." His fingers drummed on the wooden beam while he looked down the wooden staircase. "You need help to bring your podium up?"
Oh yeah, that thing! "I can just use stasis magic for it," Cter assured with another nod. Then suddenly she began to feel exhausted for some strange reason.
"I'll send someone up within the week to fix the step too."
"Yes," the Monster Mage answered distantly with her head still at the end of her nod.
"I guess you can ask Sir Gerson about it? The dress? He should have a bit better grasp on it since I'm sure he was there when it was all written." Donial chuckled. "Could be that he wrote it himself too." Saying it drained his chuckle away like a bucket without a bottom. "It could actually be..." His voice became heavy, and he excused himself with a hefty bow and hurried down the stairs, his rhythm doubling at the fifth step.
Once Cter heard the door to her study close she lifted up the book she was to place into the shelf next. Her eyes laid thick on the title of the book, taking in each old, weathered letter slowly.
'Legality Regarding the Castle'
A title with inked letters that shimmered into a nonsense sentence by a thin layer of crystal magic refracting the letters enough to give the illusion of them having shifted place.
'A Gatecrashed Gentle Girly Lit'
Yes.
"Much better."