"They said it would be rain today, but the sun shines just as bright as when they say that it will be sunny."

"Depends on how the clouds move, I feel."

"In any case though, a good day for this meeting to take place. We deserve a bit of sunshine as a good omen for what the royals are to discuss, no?"

Cter walked away from her colleagues gathering up after having done their duty of delivering the Monster Royals to the specified place at the specified time to meet with the royals from Hjearta along with the deposed king of Xoff.

At the border of Hjearta and Monster Country, where the Golden Flower fields stretched across the line where the border between the two countries was meant to be, blurring it to the point where travelers from and to both countries have agreed on a more unofficial border.

And The Flipping Heart.

The tavern marking the place of the unofficial border between Hjearta and Monster Country situated at Main Road number nine eight six was as unassuming as how it was the first time Cter passed into Monster Country after having graduated in spirit from Soul's School.

Here, time hadn't changed anything. The same distant view of Golden Flower fields that ignored the political line in the soil were the same as the day Cter went through from Soul's School, the same as the day she went through from visiting Fenkeep Castle, and it was still the same when she stood with her back against the tavern as to not eavesdrop on the royal discussion taking place within.

There was usually a lot more fanfare when something as rare as the kings and queens from the three neighboring countries would come together in one place. Feasts grander than grand. Fireworks with splendor unmatched. Riches displayed and traded. Dances to show off the highest of fashion. Celebrations that would spill out into the capital, where all, both humans and monsters, and both rich and poor, would join in to sing and praise throughout night and day. It had only happened a few times throughout history.

And Cter got to experience the one which necessitated absolute secrecy.

With her back facing the gathering as to not disturb or interfere in the discussions that would come to determine if and how there would be war.

Just her luck…

"Accustomed's Ambition?" the slightly dejected Monster Mage heard from Kurant stood a ways away talking with the owner of the tavern. "So this is what all the hoopla is about?" There was slight fear in her voice as sge swirled a weathered goblet in her hand. Its matted metal didn't reflect a single ray from the midday sun turning the Golden Flower fields into a solid, gold color.

"I wouldn't," said Kry as a warning after excusing himself briefly from the hedgehog monster he had struck up conversation with. Cter recognized her as the waiter that had greeted her when she visited The Flipping Heart so many, many years ago.

All those years ago, the hedgehog monster had approached Cter to gauge how much magical potential she had. That report had been forwarded to Kry in due time for Cter's arrival, and as he went to meet her, he had decided that she wasn't anything to waste neither time or effort on.

If Cter were to guess, the hedgehog monster's gauging of her magical potential would be a bit different had she decided to do it again.

Not a humble thought, but a true one.

"The Flipping Heart..."

Cter turned to the voice approaching the bench she had sat down on, the same one she had rejected to sit on since she needed to stretch her legs when she first came through from Soul's School. She already knew who it was by the cold simmer that had touched at her ear before his voice had. To boot, his aura was very easy to recognize.

"Has some different connotations these days than it did before."

In how warm it was due to its cold.

"True enough," agreed the Fourth Monster Mage as the Royal Mage of Ice invited himself to sit down next to her. "An upside-down monster soul glowing a blinding white." She knew exactly what he meant by that.

How could she not?

"If it is not too much to ask, Monster Mage."

How could she even begin to forget?

"Did the Fusion's soul look like that? Like The Flipping Heart's sign?"

Cter looked through her combined braid resting gently down her shoulder at the icy haze flowing down like wispy avalanches down the sun-heated robe Terri wore. "I didn't get a look at it," she answered factually. "It never showed its soul to me, only its intentions. Its aura was enough for me to want to close my eyes forever when it finally understood what it was that it had become." When it finally accepted what it had become.

"My apologies for asking," offered Terri as he heard the coarse, helpless tone Cter's voice and aura descended into. "Don't really know what I would have done with the answer, to be perfectly honest." His shrug was innocent. "Just...has been on my mind ever since the Noitaidarr Trial." His eyes moved over Cter's head and towards the sign with the glowing inscription of an inverse monster soul.

"When you revealed that the theory about the human soul was true, and that it not only had the inverted shape of a monster soul, but that it had color to it as well, my mind immediately went to this sign." Terri touched at his chest gingerly, pushing aside the avalanche-like fog rolling down from his hair and ornaments on his shoulders. "Each time I've traveled past here I've begun thinking." With a tentative flinch he turned to ask Cter. "What other colors might there be?"

Cter turned away.

"You've thought about it too, haven't you?"

She turned away harder.

"All mages have."

Clenching her teeth hard together.

"All humans have."

Closing her eyes hard together.

"But you are the only one who have seen one, even to this day."

"I've had other things on my mind," Cter replied through her gritted expression that had begun to hurt with how much she was holding it tight. "I've had other things to think about." She shook her head, displacing her combined braid from its gentle rest on her shoulder. "I'm a monster, Terri. I'm a monster who's busy with monster-related thoughts."

"You're a monster in everything but soul, Cter," Terri reminded rather casually. "Your human soul, with its human color." His casual tone disappeared as he breathed in with fear. "Wait..." His breaths deepened. "Have you seen yours?"

"Of course not!"

Cter's shout and slash in the air with her arm caused the murmur from within The Flipping Heart to quiet down for a moment, earning her a handful of confused-mixed-angry looks from the humans and monsters around her making sure that the absolute secrecy of the royal meeting at The Flipping Heart wasn't found out. After all, who would look for the Monster Royals, the Hjearta royals, and the disposed king of Xoff among a concentrated gathering of high-ranking military personnel at a quaint little village showing up unannounced and taking over the local tavern?

"I haven't seen my soul," Cter said through her teeth at Terri. "And I never want to. I saw Sund's, and that was one too many for me. Had you seen it too you would never have wanted to see another. Everyone who believes that they want to see a human's soul, be it their own or another one's, have thrown away what it took for it to reveal itself."

The Royal Mage of Ice did not react the way Cter imagined he would, whatever that would have been. Instead, he moved his head calmly towards Lerjung who was picking some herbs from the small garden next to The Flipping Heart. "I ask because it has helped a few that I know by thinking about it. To consider what color their soul might be."

Cter didn't say anything to not prompt Terri to continue. At the same time though, she did not ask him to stop, nor did she up and leave. The truth of the matter was that she wanted to think about it. She wanted to know. Her eyes had changed when she had the Fusion inside her arm. They had changed colors when Sund was within her soul. Her windows to her own soul had changed with his presence, and changed back without his presence. There was a connection, but each time Cter thought back on it it just…

It just hurt.

It's all it did.

She knew that every other mage had thought about it. That every other human had thought about it. Amid all the horror that was the Fusion, the existence of the human soul had been proven. It had been weaved in with the truth of the Cooperative Connection. The colorful human soul, with all its potential unshackled from the constraints of the Cooperative Connection that had set to drain the color from it.

With Manny at Rasliela's side, the first human mage that came to understand and utilize the full potential of his unshackled soul, would the upcoming war only be about humans, or would it be about monsters too? Would it only be about the succession of the Xoff lineage, or would it be about magic too?

"Lerjung wouldn't have attended the Council of Three Countries had she not considered what her soul might be." Terri's words barely registered with Cter being so far away in her own thoughts. "She told you about how the truth of the human soul made her feel at the Noitaidarr Trial, didn't she?"

That she did. Told Cter that it was her fault that Lerjung's sorrows about pushing away others in her life for her goal to find the truth of the human soul had blossomed into a burgeoning hate towards all monsters. That she felt that it was Cter's fault, and that she was too old and hurt by the reveal of the human's soul came about in such a tragic and horrible even to feel otherwise.

A shiver ran through the Royal Mage of Ice as Cter's aura soured like the most unripe of lemons. "Right..." He had to gather himself for a bit to shake it loose. "What if I told you that she came to think of that reveal as a chance to discover instead?"

Not much changed in Cter's aura, and another shiver caused ripples in the opaque, cold fog down Terri's robes.

The Royal Mage was used to the cold though, even if it was caused by a disinterested look and the even more disinterested aura from the most powerful mage there was. He steeled himself against the half-closed eyes that judged judgments too numerous to count. "She has figured a theory about what dictates the potential color of the human soul?" he tried to intrigue, failing to do so. "And has found something that might confirm that in some of the more ancient texts found in the cellar library at Fenkeep Castle?"

Mhm?

"Texts that speak of similar things exist in the records at Noitaidarr Castle too."

Mhm?

"Texts that speak of the importance of the rainbow."

Mhm?

"Rainbows that the human souls join in after death."

Mh–

Oh?

The Royal Mage of Ice indulged in his victory to win over the Monster Mage's attention by allowing himself a brief smile which he quickly coughed away as to not push it too far. "Long ago," he began while moving his right hand in front of him in a slow motion, filling up a small cloud of cold fog which he dotted a few cores of magical ice into with eager taps. "Before written times."

"So what about the scrolls then?" Cter hung up on immediately. "How can you know if it was before written times?"

This time it was Terri's turn to furrow his brows with slight annoyance. The small stage of fog he had set up turned more opaque with the grumble that birthed within his aura. "When things are written down they are usually written about things that have happened already, you know?" his rebuttal was as grumbling as his aura was. "Things can be written after the fact has happened, to keep a record of said fact that happened." He returned to his magical fog for a second, but could not find the peace of mind he needed to continue telling.

Instead, he looked over to his predecessor and magical mentor idly picking some dill. "Lerjung found these texts because she was in charge of helping the current king and queen to sort out the library at Fenkeep Castle to make room for more books written by monsters as a celebration for Sund becoming the First Monster Mage born in Hjearta and taught at Soul's School.

They had wanted a reason to clean it up, Lerjung told me when we went down into the cellar of the castle to where she had helped move the more older texts and scrolls that she could not throw away in good conscience."

The fog turned more transparent again as Terri straightened his head.

"Texts that detailed a time we are not sure of still. A time where humans and monsters either lived together or were together. They are transcripts of old legends and songs that the people of Hjerta had as traditions before they became Hjearta, so to speak. Before Hjearta was a country, that is." The Royal Mage of Ice chuckled. "Hell, Lerjung and I found some scrolls that detailed the powers the Hjearta royals have. The foundation of where their power is derived from, and who they serve with that power. Not the best of findings to have been thrown out of the official records."

Oh no…

"Their subjects?" Cter managed to ask through her horror of having to learn about another country's power structure through a legal filter. Her widened eyes and building fear in her aura caused slight worry with the Royal Mage.

"N...No," he said with hesitation. After an awkward second he pointed upwards. "Higher up." He extended his arm fully up towards the clouding sky. "Much, much higher up."

Cter nodded, "Right," and hoped that it would be the end of it.

Which, to her luck, it seemed to be, as Terri lowered his arm to scratch at his temple. "In any case." He traced his thoughts back to where he had left off with a grumble. "These transcripts of the old legends Lerjung had mostly discarded as not culturally important. Mentally discarded, that is," he added quickly. "She told them to the family she had left in her youth, her mage youth, but had forgotten them. She is an old mage now, after all."

She could still pick herbs peacefully though, so she was not as old as Rasliela was.

"She hadn't discarded them from the library though, only moved them down to the cellar where she again found them hidden behind the illusory wall she had created to keep them safe. I think too she came to remember more of her family when she read them again, as I had to lean in with a hand under her head to catch a few tears that would have otherwise landed on the old parchment she was reading from. So old it was that we had to handle it with as little stasis magic as we possibly could."

The Royal Mage pinched together his sleeved finger, producing a quiet, faint purple sheen that barely managed through the cold fog. "Never have I used magic so tenderly before." He snapped the purple magic away. "And never have I read something as closely relevant to today from something so old."

The Royal Mage spoke with an emphatic push that blew a hole in his foggy cloud. He didn't seem to realize until later, for in the moment he hung his eyelids low, blinking eventually after a few seconds. "For those who's bond has been broken, may your souls shine bright now that it is free, and replace the warmth that vanished with you."

He breathed in.

"Let it illuminate the undiscovered path that awaits you. May it remind you of the happiness you brought to everyone you graced with your presence. Join the ones you thought were gone, and smile to us as we awe at the rainbow you have joined." He paused. "For as the sun brings color to rain, so shall you bring color to the void, so that we may find you when we join you in times to come."

Terri pushed his foggy cloud into the air where it placed itself between the sun and the bench the two mages were sat on. From within, the magical ice cores cooled the fog into drops that the Royal Mage painted a wide curtain of rain with.

A dark line appeared in the gravel road from the water drops where the bench stood at the side of. The deep chasms from the many carriages that had arrived a few hours before had begun to fill with water when Terri dissipated his magical cloud, wringing the last few drops of conjured rain from it like a washing rag.

From the thin wall of rained-through air was formed a small rainbow which looked the same for both mages, but not exactly the same. "It was an old burial hymn from before," said Terri while taking the sight of his rainbow through the misty veil he had made.

"Different from how we honor the dead today. Back then, they did not see the dead as having fallen down. They did not see the body as returning to the soil and becoming something new and different with nature. Maybe they did, but it was not the focus of the deceased." For something so grim as death he sure approached it with a strange enthusiasm. Not out of the question for a human mage who's power was taught to be derived from an understanding of not only the human way of viewing death, but the monster way of viewing death as well.

"The focus was on the soul of the deceased, something that we seem to have lost with the way we bury our fallen down today." His mouth tucked to the side involuntarily. "Although I'm not sure if I should call it lost." With a lean back he put his weight onto the backrest of the metal bench with his arms crossed over his chest, thickening the depth of his magical fog.

He sat there for a short while, thinking. When he realized that Cter wouldn't chime in on the matter, he pretended that he didn't do it to give her time to say something.

"Or perhaps we did lose it, as we now have discovered that a human's soul has color to it." The Royal Mage of Ice leaned forwards instead, placing his elbows on his knees and his palms together under his nose, making it look like his nostrils were steaming. "Or did we rediscover that a human's soul has color to it?" he asked around his put-together hands, pushing out smoky fog like Barbeqa after having eaten something bad. "If so, then what made us lose it to have it be rediscovered like we did?"

We?

"Like you did," rephrased Terri after seeing a brief flash of pink glow rush through the lines on Cter's sleeve. "My apologies for that, Monster Mage. I've...talked to others about this." His palms rubbed together as he lifted off his nose from them and averted away his head. As he did though, he caught eyes with Kry, who lingered eye contact for a moment too long for Cter not to notice.

"I see," she said.

"I would want to excuse it with that I have been trying to gather as much as I can before talking to you about it, if I may." Terri's defensive smile was disarming. "Since you are the one that did discover the human soul. Since you are the only one that has seen a human's soul." Disarming at first, but then fell apart. "And even with talking to others before I still misspoke where it mattered the most."

There was genuine shame and disappointment the Royal Mage had in himself. His aura sank in its luster the same as the Golden Flower fields did as a large cloud drifted across the sun. Noticeable in the depth it dove down from more than how deep it went.

He didn't let it sink more than he allowed though. Within his aura birthed a resolve that stood against the sinking feeling. "I need your thoughts on the matter though, Cter." His magical fog flickered with ice-like glimmers.

"I need to know from the mage that saw a human's soul. I've found similar rituals from copies of old texts from Xoff which I asked the Xoff delegation to bring with them for the Council of Three Countries. I did not have to study them for long for I knew what it was I was looking for. I knew deep within me that I would find the same connection between the human soul and the rainbow. I knew it." His glacier-cold eyes found Cter's with a clarity of the purest ice. "My soul knew it."

There was something within the Royal Mage's eyes.

"And I know that it knows."

Something Cter felt compelled to believe in.

"And it knows that I know."

Something she had felt before.

"It and I are together in this."

Something...strong.

"We only need you in this too."

Something so…

"Please."

Determined.

"...Okay."

Enough to break through the most powerful mage in the world.

"Okay, Terri."

Enough to break through the hurt she had.

"What is it you want to know?"

Enough to let her see the same rainbow he did.

"Sund's soul, Cter. How did it look, exactly?"