"Week thirty five."

The glitter from the surface of the lake behind Soul's School sparkled with the joy of finally being free of ice even during early mornings.

"Progress on the Soul Rainbow has progressed more than expected since week twenty, but less than expected from week thirty and onwards."

It was a bigger lake than the one at her home village, covering some twice or thrice the area. The depth was most likely the same, however Cter had not tried to confirm that. Easier to time how long it took her to walk around it than to dive down into an unknown dark depth, and all that.

She still enjoyed visiting the quiet world below the lake surface as it was the same for the lake at Soul's School. If anything it was even quieter due to its size, weirdly enough. It was busier than her home village's lake, yes, but it wasn't more busier than it was larger. More commotion, but more spread out.

"Have reached a point where I might have to confer with Priestess Frioke about exactly how she went about formulating the Cooperative Connection."

And interestingly, no one to come interrupt her when she spent time floating inside the lake despite it being much more open than the forest-hidden lake in Cter's home village. A few concerned suggestions that she shouldn't do it in the middle of winter and that she should at least have one of the Royal Guards be nearby to use stasis magic if needed, but no real interruptions.

"I have a lot to show of my time spent here, but nothing I have managed to be substantial yet. Many threads, but no woven cloak just yet."

It was a while until Cter felt that she needed to visit the underwater world again. The first month or so of her getting used to her, quote-unquote, bequeathed institution, was spent mostly to prepare for the visit from the Hjearta royals to make Cter's presence in Hjearta public.

A new dean to keep the institute warm during the winter and to utilize the vacant institute so that King Soulay's gift to the future would not go unused throughout the turmoils of said future's time. The Fourth Monster Mage, the most powerful mage in the world, was in Hjearta on the behalf of the Hjearta queen and king to begin heal the trust between humans and monsters!

Or at least, so did the official record show.

"If I could figure out a way to tell earlier that an idea would only lead me bumping into a wall while focusing on the tracks in the ground it would save me a lot of headaches and subsequent dizziness from applying healing magic on my head. If only one idea would have gone just a bit further I could perhaps have gained some comparison as to what is not at all feasible versus potentially feasible."

Cter wasn't going to deny that she enjoyed spending almost two months essentially decorating for a winter feast. Compared to the festivities for the Council of Three Countries, the winter feast to mark her new deanship over Soul's School was without any substantial worries.

The most troubles she had was figuring a way to incorporate into the decorations the large fabric hanging in the main hall of the main building. It had to both respect what Soulay's Academy for Humanities and Magical Studies for the Betterment of Monsterkind and Humanity was, as well as show convincingly enough that Cter was going to take the institution into a new direction.

"I am running into the limit of seeing the human soul as a potential for magic for it does not lend itself to be explored practically. There are ways I can infer its existence via magic, however not in a way that does not only lead back to it being only a potential. I can churn milk how much I want, but it will still be dairy in the end, even if the cheese is drastically different from the milk I began with. I can make the cheese dry and hard and present it as a block of wax, but it won't burn should I stick a wick in it and ignite it. Only by using magic can I keep the wick lit and that will fool the ones I have to keep fooled, but it has begun to gnaw at my patience a bit. Call it pride, for that it certainly is, but I have become invested in this. I have become invested in making...wax out of milk… Oh boy… Perhaps with week thirty-five's correspondence I will have managed a better-formulated analogy."

Of course that was all that it was. It was all just a show. A splendid show with warm spiced wine and gingerbread galore to quell any thoughts of insurrection among the Hjearta nobility. The Hjearta royals reminded that they had a strong ally with Monster Country and that said strong ally was present within insurrection-quelling distance away from Fenkeep Castle.

Cter displayed her magic in a show both of splendor and force with the contingent of Royal Guards and Fenkeep Castle guard around her, including the Royal Mage of Ice. They would both be in Soul's School within earshot of any, if all, threats against the Hjearta monarchy when the bulk of their army moved out of country to Xoff.

A theater of sorts to keep the Hjearta royals safe upon their thrones while they helped secure the Xoff king's deposed throne with an audience that wasn't invited to be entertained, but reminded as to the Hjearta royals' power within their own borders.

All the while their Monster Mage scarecrow helped herself to another slice of pudding.

For that was her role in the political scheme that was the winter feast. She was to display her magic, make a complimentary speech about the rebuilding of the trust between humans and monsters, then humbly invite up the Hjearta royals to have the word to tell that they were joining the Xoff king to bring him back on the throne.

And then Cter ate pudding.

"And while my own magic was discovered by a subversion of the Cooperative Connection it did not change the initial assumption about the human soul being a magical potential. What the scrolls and books that the Royal Mage of Ice and his predecessor describe the human soul is something more...fundamental. Something that all humans own. While it is true that magical potential can be found seemingly anywhere from any person regardless of who they are or the status they were born into, there still isn't the notion that the human soul exists in every human. Not in the way the Cooperative Connection sees it as, that is. The Soul Rainbow is a new way of looking at magical potential, in a nutshell. Or maybe I should that it is an old way of looking at it?"

It was only until after that grandiose winter feast which took the better part of two months to plan and then the better part of two weeks to return to previous form that Cter could actually begin to make Soul's School a place for her to research at rather than study at. The two were fairly close in that it essentially boiled down to her reading a lot and then trying out what she had read with her magic. The difference mostly laid in that research was quiet and studying was loud.

Cter did her research in the quiet with only the occasional conversation slipping in from the Royal Guard contingency that was brought with her. Sometime between themselves, but often times between them and the guards from Fenkeep Castle. None of the human guards she recognized from the group that escorted her up the final hill at Fenkeep years before. Perhaps they were more needed at the castle, or perhaps they were to be sent to the war?

Thinking about the latter had Cter understanding more about why Terri's aura turned into more ice than it already was when the two traveled from her home village to Soul's School. While she hadn't been explicitly in favor of the human war she had only thought of it being tragic in what led up to it and the overarching meaning of it.

Thinking about the soldiers she helped bond closer being sent out to risk death made the war feel more personal to her, if only for a moment. She apologized to Terri shortly after about what she had said in the carriage. He accepted the apology, and thanked Cter for thinking about it from his point of view.

"In that nutshell, the Soul Rainbow seems to state that there is another type of human soul. A human soul that is more akin to the monster soul, funnily enough without anything inherently magical to it, in the sense that it is inherit to all humans and not the few that have magical potential. For why else was it the way humans saw death before the concept of fallen down slowly replaced it? Before the concept of human magic as we know it was realized? Did it occur at the same time humans and monsters began to depend on the other more? Was it the opposite? Despite the texts being old they aren't old enough to answer those questions. I've tried to go down both paths, but there is too much uncertainty that comes with the other path that I only end up tripping myself with my left leg figuring to go right and my right leg figuring to go left, ending up with me not figuring anything."

Walking around Soul's School in the middle of winter after the winter feast while exploring the libraries she didn't get to when she was a student was a very calming and serene experience. Making use of the sparse daylight to find the books and scrolls she figured would be relevant to the soul rainbow and then retreating to the reading rooms where she used magical lights to read through them.

While the libraries weren't exactly labeled in numerical order which one was most relevant to the topic of the long-forgotten Soul Rainbow, Cter could still fairly easily find good places to look by feeling for the magic the skeleton librarian used to read her books.

And then she would look otherwise.

"It has been frustrating at times, but most of it has been fulfilling and rewarding. Even though I have always ended up at a dead end with my different theories I have still enjoyed the time spent before those dead ends. Even though I have made discoveries previously I haven't really done it systematic before. There is a different feel to it when writing down what you believe you will discover rather than being surprised by it and writing it down afterwards after the surprise and shock of the discovery. Thinking about how and why my theories will manifest makes me more aware to catch them when they go wry. They haven't yet, since again I haven't gotten far enough with them to risk them going wry, but from what I've sent along previously you can infer what could have gone wrong had I managed further with any of the dead-ended theories."

Those of the few theories that did make it to the point where Cter could start experimenting magically on reminded her strongly of when she was a first-year student struggling to learn how to use her soul for magic. With what she had to do with her research though she had to both unlearn how she had been taught magic and how she had used it for years upon years and then learn again differently how she would express her magic differently from the years upon years of experience that she had to relearn.

"Strangely enough, some of it has worked. Worked to the point where they didn't, that is. Some of it has triggered a response in my left arm that feels the same as I normally do magic. One example which I'll be adding with this Echo Flower is seeing human magic more as an expression of will rather than an expression of memories. It could be that it was a fluke that I triggered something from memories instead because the expressions are similar in nature. There is a determining factor that I could not nail down though as it did not produce anything of substantial aura. Once I feel that I have exhausted all my options I will begin to retread through the ones that had the most potential, but for now I will continue to look for new ways. There are still sections in the libraries which I have not gone through yet. Considering that I managed to find a link between one of the old scrolls from Fenkeep Castle and an old cookbook housed here I might even have to go through what I've dismissed thus far too."

While Cter did not expect to fully discover a brand new type of human magic with her research at Soul's School, dictating her findings to her Echo Flowers she sent over to Jarasevo Castle akin to how Professor Leraull sent his lectures to his absent students did have her feel like her dead ends maybe weren't dead ends after all?

On their own they were dead ends, and dead ends not so far away from where she had started, but still… She had found so many ones that had potential to have...um...potential. Throwing a pair of dice enough times and surely it would roll a seven at least once, right? That of course was assuming that there was another way for human magic to be expressed. Just the thought of it though was enough to have Cter wanting to try one more time after hitting another dead end.

After a day or two of moping and walking around with her cloak pulled far over her head to mellow in the deep broodiness of her failure, that is.

"Now that the Echo Flowers have begun to bloom again you can expect more regular updates once more. Since this flower I am speaking into currently is the last of the batch Professor Leraull left behind I will again remind Kurant that it is not because I am lazy and just sledding and skiing during the winter that my Echo Flower updates became sparser. It was planned all along so that I could inform you of what was important and also give me enough time to find important things. That it also gave me time to sled and ski was a complete coincidence. Complete and utter coincidence."

Which didn't stop Cter in the slightest from trying to get enough speed to clear the flat ground between the hill Soul's School stood upon and the lake to slide out onto the ice. Nor did it stop the Royal Mage of Ice and the guards, both human and monster, from joining her in that attempt too.

The day after the hill looked like a recently plowed farm, albeit very poorly plowed without any straight lines whatsoever which wouldn't bring in a good harvest. It was lucky that none of the villagers from the nearby villages came to visit during that time lest they would have thought twice about helping to supply the important research they had been told was going on at the institute.

Less supplies from the surrounding villages was needed when spring came due to the roads being better fit for travel as well as the Hjearta army sending supplies ahead towards the Monster Country border in preparation for the upcoming war. Since Cter being at Soul's School was part of the war effort there were supplies sent her way.

"I am also pleased to report that the hauntings reported by the villagers turned out to be a patch of Echo Flowers that had taken root in a shading in the nearby forest. If you could ask Professor Leraull if he remembers taking a walk in the forest after tending to his Echo Flowers that would help explain how they got there. We made sure to get as much of the Echo Flower roots as possible lest they grow out of control and turn the forest into a mountain side with all of its echoing. Hearing distant and terrified screams while unrooting the flowers was a bit harrowing for the guards we dispatched to the shading, and I understand their choice to cut off the stems to quiet them. In fact I would have done the same. I explain this to explain why I did not use those Echo Flowers to dictate a few weeks earlier. They are contained now though, and I am keeping some barricade magic around the greenhouses to make sure that no seeds escape."

Cter had never seen so many human soldiers at the same time as when the supply caravan rolled up to the campus' entrance. Soldiers clad in armor and wielding weapons that weren't meant to be decorative. Straight, wide blades with no curves at all to them to present the craftmanship first and foremost.

No, the blade the soldiers carried at their hips were functional. Only functional. There was no grace to them, nor detailing or finesse. It didn't even look like the blade her father had in his work shed to remind him of his past. That blade looked like it had care put into it, something to put above a mantle and admire and reminisce over.

But what the soldiers carried would only bring harrow when hung above a mantle.

"Week thirty five..."

There were humans with magical potential among the soldiers. Humans that had been to Soul's School. Mages. Mages that wore no sleeve and who's auras were suppressed. Cter could still read them though. She could still feel at their emotions from the faint aura they carried with them.

There was a mixture of pride and anxious fear among the auras. Fear and anxiousness hidden behind the horizontal bars of the visors of their metal helmets. The only emotion visible was the careless waft of their colorful plumage from the back of their helmets. Behind the identical helmets were an array of different humans with different auras for those who had. They were all their own, but arranged to be just one. One squad of one platoon of one army. Their humanity hidden away from view.

"They should have reached Xoff by now, right?"

Was it for their own sake that they were hidden away like that? Hidden behind armor so that they would not see that it was their friends that stood besides them on the battlefield about to fight for their country? Was it the same for the human mages not wearing sleeves? With no sleeve they would not be able to read the auras of those around them. They would not be able to feel the fear of the ones around them, and thus would stay calmer. They would only see the stoic solidity of the helmets around them.

Steel them to be the same as their armor was made out of.

"The war has started, hasn't it?"

Cter may have abandoned her humanity to serve monsterkind.

"Humans are fighting humans."

But have the soldiers abandoned their humanity to serve humanity?

"They are–"

Heavy footsteps interrupted the Monster Mage's dictating into the Echo Flower sat in its vase next to her on the bench next to the path looking out over the lake. She turned her head to see the Royal Mage of Ice approaching with his head blinking slowly out over the blue surface glittering in the morning sunlight.

After covering up the Echo Flower with a wooden box padded with wool to muffle any outside sound, Cter turned to greet Terri, who only lifted his naked hand in return. There was trouble in his aura. A strange type of trouble. Trouble she had never felt in his aura before. It was akin to when she spoke about the war with him in the carriage, but not as...intense.

"Don't stand up," he said without emotion when Cter put weight onto the arm rest she had leaned on with her elbow. "Sit still, please."

Cter thought to say something, but a sound behind her stopped her. It was a heavy sound. A metallic sound. The sound of…

"Swords?" she said in reaction, turning her head to see four drawn and held tightly in their grips.

"Cter," Terri said loudly to not have her turn any more. "Just please look at me, and don't move your arm. Don't do anything with your aura." His instructions were harsh, but not demanding. They were pleading. Pleading from his very soul for Cter not to move or do anything but sit still. "The others listened because I promised them that nothing would happen with you, so please, listen you too. Your Royal Guards are safe, Cter."

He met Cter's confused eyes with his own. The icy blue color was as intense as the trouble in his aura, unblinking, and holding Cter's gaze hard so that she wouldn't move. "I want to keep that promise, but you have to listen to me and be calm throughout what I tell you, okay?"

The Monster Mage felt that there were more humans behind her. How many? Their shadows flanked her on both sides. Two? Four? Ten? Why so many? Why any at all?

The Royal Mage of Ice took the wooden box and tucked it in under his arm. "We have gotten news from Xoff," he said with a voice so heavy he could barely speak his words. "The war between the human kingdoms is no more."

But isn't that…

"G-Good?"

"An uneasy peace has formed between Hjearta and Xoff."

"Okay..." How?

Did Rasliela surrender? Did she win? Did she win because of her magic, and that was why there were guards stood behind Cter?

"We're no longer at war with Xoff."

Yes, he said that already. What did he–

"We're at war with Monster Country."

At war with–

"With Monster Country?" Cter wanted to stand up and demand an answer, but her head felt faint. She felt weak all over. Her breath shortened and her limbs felt like they were made out of lead. "But..." She was so dizzy. She was so confus…

No.

No, she wasn't.

She knew.

She knew, and that was why her entire being refu–

No!

No, it couldn't be true!

"It returned, Cter."

No!

"It returned at the first battle."

No…

Please…please...no…

"There has been another, Cter."

Singe her soul…

"There has been another Fusion."

Why…