"But he's a wonderful human, isn't he?"

The echoes of Romrom's voice inside Cter's head was palpable, rattling against the inside of her ears like the hallways at Jarasevo Castle where Donial was busy refurbishing. For those though it was easy enough to dampen the loud commotion with magic. Inside Cter's head though…

"Tall, smart, good occupation and lineage. He is all the things your father wasn't when he married your mother, chickling. It would be nice to have someone like that in the family."

For all of what Romrom had talked for Cter, with all how she had gently caressed her granddaughter's mind and soul, helping Cter cry when she so much needed to. For all of how Romrom had given Cter another perspective to her magical carvings.

"It would strengthen comradery between Monster Country and Hjearta too if the two most powerful mages of respective countries fell into matrimony. Help with the wedge driven between humans and monsters as well. You, a monster in law and state, marrying a human to show that the love between both races will always overcome."

Imagination had been running a bit too wild for Cter's taste.

"A grandiose wedding held at either Fenkeep Castle or Jarasevo Castle, perhaps both as you get married in the human sense in Jarasevo and in the monster sense in Fenkeep, to make things interesting? A wedding to mark the end of these years of strife between the humans and monsters, showing that we can once again come together out of love and affection."

Romrom had ruminated on the prospect as if Cter wasn't there at all. Her thought-busy lean forward was very similar to how Sir Gerson did when he fell into deep thought about the politics he had surrounded himself with.

"The little I managed to speak with him I understood a lot of him. He has both a quiet and loud intelligence about him, both putting on display his ice magic yet still being open to listen even though his status and title would have him be the one speaking instead. He's humble with his accomplishments, and if anything he was praising me instead for how wonderful my eldership has kept the village flourishing despite its mundane prospects. I've heard plenty of such praises before, but very rarely do they sound genuine. His did, both from his words and his soul. His aura reminded me of yours after a while, especially with how he tried to tone it down so that he wouldn't come across as bragging. Had he not done that I might have forgotten that you were here too, Cter. Had he not reminded me of you I would have continued talking with him until the sun came down."

Cter wasn't sure if Romrom meant that in a humbling way about Terri or if she again had forgotten completely about her granddaughter. While it did show that Romrom had complete trust in that Cter felt better, it did slip a bit too quickly towards everything being fine and dandy.

Perhaps if Romrom had asked about Cter's opinion about how she felt about Terri rather than the old raven monster continuing to prattle on and on about him without any regard, dis or otherwise, towards the other half of her supposed grandiose wedding.

A bit like how Cter's father did when pursuing Cter's mother, come to think of it.

Which meant that Cter was being punished for the sins of her father?

A sin so grave that Romrom would have Cter marry Terri so that she could get back at Cter's father at first, and for the betterment of the world at large second?

And here Cter thought that the politics of war following a coup at the Xoff royalty was complex. It was, no doubt about that, but it was understandably complex.

With Romrom it was more confusingly complex.

"He's shrewd too, something I guess both got him his position and title as the Royal Mage of Ice which also has helped him hone that to let him see things as clear as core ice. He correctly guessed that the prosperity I've managed to bring into the village has been due to you having grown up here. It doesn't take much to have word of mouth spread, and if you prod at it a bit like a hot poker you can get some curious flames going quite easily."

But would they burn the house down though?

"A mention of your name to a traveling merchant stumbling across our village incentivises him or her to return to perhaps hear something new about the most powerful mage in the world. Said merchant then shares that mention with others on their travels and suddenly there are more travelers stumbling upon this village hidden away few days or so travel from Pulsaoder."

A few days indeed.

The echoes of Romrom's voice rattling inside Cter's head was drowned out due to the more physical rattle of the carriage's wheels navigating the forest road which had begun to falter due to the increase in traffic that Romrom had spoken about. It was physical evidence of Cter's fame, something she had never really considered before. Her legacy as the Fourth Monster Mage was literally carved into the ground, deep enough to–

"Oh, careful there."

Deep enough to have roots be exposed…

"Did you hit your head on the window corner?"

Cter rubbed her head where she had bounced into the corner of the window with a teethed inhale. "I did," she pushed through her gritted, pained expression. She had leaned against the window to wave farewell to Romrom and her parents which she had a brief, but comforting moment with, and then felt that it was comfortable staying there with her head against the cold glass. Her parents knew that she did not have time to stay, and they understood that. That they understood only had Cter wanting to stay more though. Only had her wanting to be with them more.

She did not want them involved more with the goings on of the world more though. Once things were over and calmer she'd return to be with them for a while longer, that she promised. She had a people to protect. Once they did not need protecting as much no more she'd come back. Once the world did no longer know of the Fusion she'd come back.

But first she had to be a fancily dressed scarecrow.

With a sore spot on the top of her head.

"Doesn't seem to be bleeding," said Cter after leafing through her thick hair like the pages of a dryly written book. "Damn it hurts though."

"I'd imagine," sympathized Terri from the other side of the carriage with an awkward angle to his seat as he too bounced from the exposed root the carriage drove over. He did not bounce as much as Cter did though. He did not hit his head while leaning against a window losing himself to the echoes of his grandmother's voice talking about all the wonders of the world coming to fruition from him marrying…himself. "You want me to heal it?"

Cter raised her slightly green-glowing sleeve palm to show that she would take care of it. "I do not like healing magic on my head even from myself." It always had her feeling something between dizzy and sleepy for a while afterwards. "Nothing against you." Just the lingering, slight loathing from Romrom talking about Cter marrying Terri when she did not have any real feelings for him. No fake ones either. It would fade with time though.

Hopefully.

"I understand," Terri made sure to make as clear as possible. "Although I'd imagine that you'd get a slightly different response from someone who wasn't as well-acquainted to magic as I am." He chuckled as he meant it as a silly jest, but Cter wasn't completely sure what he meant by it, exactly. "I speak from experience," he explained with a quick motion of his hand bumping at his chest.

"Assumed that you'd that as well." His bumped hand came up to scratch at one of his frosted tips. "Although I guess that living and working in a castle of monsters means that there is a slightly higher average knowledge of magic compared to a human castle."

From what Cter experienced when she visited Fenkeep Castle as an honorary guest and the entirety of the Noitaidarr Trial, yes. Very much so indeed.

"There have been times when I have had to explain to some noblemen and noblewomen that healing magic can not help with healing astigmatism in their eyes so that they won't have to be bothered by glasses no more." The Royal Mage of Ice shrugged one hand up. "They would then counter back with some hushed clicked tongues and tell me that they had heard about astigmatism being helped with healing magic at Fenkeep Castle."

Then his other.

"To which I had to also explain that astigmatism is named after the monster since the condition is exactly the same in how it presents itself in humans. It is analogous to how magical potential is named after King Soulay since it was with him it was quote-unquote discovered. It still existed well before it was named, but it was only then that it was distinctly found and written down for the first time, so to speak."

Same with school after aquatic monsters too, technically.

"But yes, a wrong assumption on my part about the magical clique you're submerged within, Monster Mage." Terri leaned carefully towards the window next to him to glimpse forwards for any more dangers in the road. "Good thing that we're not heading towards Fenkeep Castle then, right?"

The Royal Mage's cheeky smile was met with a furrowed confusion from the opposite end of the carriage amid a faint haze of green healing magic. "We're...not?" The sore spot stung from Cter's flinched tilt of her head and narrowing eyes. "Then..." She looked outside through the healing magic with her narrowed eyes widening large. "Then where are we going?"

Wasn't she supposed to be a political scarecrow? Wasn't she supposed to be in Hjearta to scare away any contenders to the throne? How was she gonna do that if she wasn't heading towards Fenkeep Castle where she could protect the Hjearta royals directly? Where else would she be going then?

"You didn't...hear?" The Royal Mage's eyes blinked in the miasma of confusion that had flowed over to him from Cter. His arms crossed, scraping loose some frost on his arms. "It was discussed after the royals had given their thoughts and orders on the matter of the war." He unfolded one hand to point out the window into the passing landscape of forests and trees. "We're heading towards Soul's School."

That was Cter's second guess to where they were going, yes.

But still, why not Fenkeep Castle?

"When exactly was this discussed?" asked Cter with weight in her voice to disguise the fact that she had no idea. She put the same weight on her lean forward, placing both her elbows on her knees and folding her hands underneath her nose. She peered with premonition and the same hard stare that Barbeqa always got when one asked for some extra salt. "Pray tell, Royal Mage."

The weight of Cter's aura and important lean forward was apparently too much for the Royal Mage as his head sank down along with his eyelids, stopping only when his neck was stretched and tensed. "It was discussed with you, Cter," he said surprisingly lightly, as if he was craning his neck forward because he was confused as to how Cter could forget something so essential to remember and not because of Cter's weighty aura and important facade. "You nodded when I explained it to you directly."

Cter must have been distracted by the Royal Mage's dimples.

...

No, wait, wrong.

She must have been distracted by her thoughts about the implications of the impending war and the misery it would bring and similar serious and tragic thoughts. Thoughts that burdened her which she had to carry due to her status as the Fourth Monster Mage.

Yes, correct. That was true, yes. That was the reason for it.

"My mind was...elsewhere then," explained the Fourth Monster Mage with a sideways-angled head and squirmy fingers dancing with a pretend innocent. "The royals declaring war was difficult to listen to." She wasn't lying about that. She was just...shifting focus, was all. "I am still finding it difficult to just...accept that it is happening."

The Royal Mage nodded in agreement. "I feel the same, Monster Mage. That my country is going to war is..." Conflicted wrinkles deepened around his eyes. "It's something I'll be having difficulties with believing even after it is done." His sigh lifted and sank his folded arms. "I'm hesitant to say that it is a good thing, but I'm hoping that this will be the climax of this chapter of history. It's fitting that the building tension would be released one way or another, like clearing fallen trees laid like levers. That it had to be a war is regrettable, but inevitable. The question was between who there would be war between."

Cter felt a slight tingle through her when Terri said that it was his country that was going to war. His country. His, singular. Not Cter's country. Hers was on the sideline in the war, according to him. Her country wasn't Hjearta to him. While she understood why he said that, and while she didn't think worse of him when he said it, it still prompted a reaction from her.

She had just been at her village where she'd grow up in. In fact she could still see the smoke from it in the distance above the myriad of pointy tree tops. A village located in the depth of Hjearta a fair distance away from the main road of Pulsaoder running through the entire country.

Yet Hjearta wasn't Cter's country.

Monster Country was her country.

She was a Monster Mage who's country was Monster Country. She was a human who's country was Monster Country. She was a monster who's country was Monster Country.

Yet it still sat weirdly with her hearing that she wasn't from Hjearta in the Royal Mage's eyes. Cter knew that it was because of her having just visited her family and that it was her homesickness still lingering with her, but it was still real to her. Even if she knew why it didn't change how she felt. It would fade though.

Hopefully.

"If anything it's for the better that the war is between Hjearta and Xoff."

And there it went.

"For the..." uttered Terri with a complex expression scrunching his face. "For the better?" He held it steady among a rough patch in the roads that swayed his clothing, but not him. He was as stiff as the icy tips in his hair. "You..." He exhaled a stunned scoff which he did his best to keep neutral. "You'll have to explain yourself about that, Monster Mage." His following smile was a bit too wide to be natural.

"Because it is between humans," began Cter unapologetically and without any sugar to her words. In her sleeved palm she conjured up the Xoff flag and the Hjearta flag facing each other over the flat of her palm. The flags oscillated as she held her palm out closer to Terri. "It is for the better that it is between humans." She had to repeat herself to figure out how to best say what she wanted.

Terri held his tongue which Cter wouldn't have done had Terri said that it would have been better if the war was between humans and monsters. The dropped temperature in his aura told that he wasn't warmed up to what Cter had said though. It had sunk to a point where Cter was almost forced to summon some fire magic lest she turned into ice as solid as the Royal Mage's frost-tipped, leaf-orange hair. If there was anything she admired about him it was that he could keep quiet when needed. Same at the Council of Three Countries as it was in the carriage going down the heavily weathered dirt road.

"A human war will be a war, and not a complete annihilation." Really, Cter's best choice was to spell it out as simply as possible. The game board in Sir Gerson's office sprung to her mind with how much the Leader of the Royal Guard lived in fear of a war between humans and monsters. Not only was Monster Country flanked on both sides, but it was flanked by two human countries to boot. Humans who could put an end to monsterkind with just a handful of them. Humans who had no qualm about the most powerful mages being on the monster's side.

Because really, what could a few boulders do protect against a tidal wave?

The conjured flags hovering inside Cter's palm turned towards a third flag materializing shyly at her wrist. "There is honor in a human war." It shrunk as the human flags grew in size. "There is honor in worthy opponents and equals on the battlefield. It is where soldiers become both heroes and tragedy for the future to look back on and marvel in its scope and grandiose."

Cter let Sir Gerson's words flow through her from when she asked him about the exact same thing. "The lives that are lost have meaning to them, if not when breathing their last then at least on the parchment written in ink declaring the war to have meaning. The meaning might not be felt at formation when staring at an equally wide and deep formation across a soon to be defiled field, but there is at least the air of it among the soldiers and their officers. There is meaning in having an equal. There is meaning in breaking that equality."

With a shimmer the two larger flags combined together into one, towering above the smaller flag akin to how King Asgore towered above the Xoff king, but inverse. "A human-monster war wouldn't have meaning. There isn't honor when fire burns tinder. A human-monster war wouldn't even be worth the ink on the parchment for the human side. A signature is only needed when there is consequences to follow, and there is no consequence for a sledge descending upon an egg."

Cter blew gently on the small flag, toppling it. "There is no consequence for humans to go to war with monsters."

A somber light descended inside the carriage as the bright, teal glow from Cter's conjuration magic dissipated, leaving only the racket from the carriage wheels struggling to find proper placement in the deep grooves of the dirt road. The Royal Mage's furrow was still as wrinkled in thought as it was prior to Cter repeating what Sir Gerson had told her about the subject. His aura wasn't as deeply cold though, and while it hadn't thawed, it had mellowed out enough for his lips to not be stuck together no more.

"No consequence," he ruminated on with a slow blink. "No consequence, yet there hasn't been a human-monster war yet."

"And if that isn't a miracle considering these last couple of years," sighed Cter tiredly at in return.

A sigh seemed to be what was needed to thaw the Royal Mage's aura. "I can agree with you on that wholly." He sat up with his weight against the doily-covered backrest, rubbing his fingers together with white slivers of ice falling off his cold sleeve. "And for the sake of us not making this trip a cumbersome trench with tenser air between us than that of a thunderstorm, I am going to say that I agree to a point and then I drop that point." He inhaled sharply through his nose, exhaling it even sharper. "We are allies in this human war, after all."

There was bitterness within the Royal Mage's words.

And understandably so.

A tense silence blossomed between the two mages. A silence that hung the same as the war did over the two's heads. Over both the crystal brooch and the frosty tips, both made by the respective mages who wore them. Cter had to sit in the uncomfortable rain she had summoned herself.

With only one way to brighten it up.

"Red."

The word had the Royal Mage blinking audibly. He thought for a second. "Red?" Then the cold in his aura melted away. "Your..." He hovered his hand over his chest.

Cter mirrored the gesture. "Yes, my soul." For him it would be that color. "I believe mine is red." For her too when it wasn't white like a monster's soul. "Red like the deepest sunrise."

A warm smile exposed some of Terri's teeth. "That..." He chuckled, widening his smile and deepening his dimples. "That means a lot to me that you've told me that. I'm honored that you would share it with me, Cter." He bowed his head deeply. "Thank you, from the bottom of my soul." As he returned it upright he chuckled again. "My green-colored soul, that is. Green the same as the forests I grew up around, and the green of the herbs my family grows."

Green…

Terri's soul was green, according to him.

It fitted him.

"Yours is red, and mine is green."

But there was something nibbling at the back of Cter's head.

"It's funny."

Something that had her heart sink. That the two of theirs were–

"It's like our souls are complimentary to each other, like their colors are."

…

Damn it.