Did they…
Did they not hear what Terri said? Did they not hear him apologizing to Cter for dumping so much onto her just like that without any real warning?
No, wait, they did hear him! Manny at least was keeping one ear opened listening to them, otherwise he would not have heard Terri mentioning Sarbor at all. But then…
"Yeah okay you see," began Cter with her head feeling a bit light and with a confused scratch to her head. Her face underwent a myriad of expressions as she walked over to her bed to sit on it. It wasn't the return she had imaged that it would be, but the softness of it was still immediately familiar to her.
A wash of calm fell upon her, with the help of a few puzzled blinks and wrinkles to her forehead akin to those around where she sat on her bed sheets. It was becoming less of overcast outside her window facing the landscape around Jarasevo, but all Cter could see were the question marks dancing in front of her.
"Let me explain, Cter."
"Please."
Cter's reply was perhaps a bit sharper than she intended to, but her reasons for that were good, at least.
It was not as much an ice breaker as it was an ice grinder.
The Fourth Monster Mage massaged her forehead with her naked hand while Manny and Sarbor helped themselves to the few chairs that were present in Cter's study. Her desk chair of monster make as well as a guest chair of Hjearta make with its higher backrest and thicker wood to it. The doctor waited a bit before explaining, possible due to him searching for how to best say it all to Cter.
If only he had done it earlier, she wished.
"Or perhaps it might be better if you begin, Manny?" Sarbor asked first to the younger mage. "You have not removed your hat so I'm assuming you'd rather I tell of it?" He looked down to Manny's hands to see if there was any movement to them, but when he find none, he continued with his assumption. "You see, Manny, he..." The doctor trailed off immediately.
As soon as he began speaking, the younger mage's hands moved up to grab at the edge of his green hat's wide brim. Sarbor looked unfazed by it, as if he had planned for it happening. The notion held Cter's attention for the few seconds it took for Manny to place as much of his hat that he could down on his lap.
The last time Cter had seen Manny's white streaks they had been just that, streaks. What he wore when sitting in front of her she could not describe as anything else but scars. Scars of the same white that she had on her left arm, but while her arm had been fully taken over where her White Flesh had consumed, for Manny it looked as if his skin was being sucked down into the harshly white crevices that bound around him like chains.
The white of his left eye was indistinguishable from the White Flesh which carved past it and down his nose at a slashing angle down over the edge of his mouth and continuing down his chin and throat. As he opened his mouth to speak, the White Flesh on his lips hung together like honey before breaking off. He could feel it.
And Cter could too.
"Singe my soul..." she exhaled in sympathy.
"Don't pity me," Manny was quick to reply. His voice was noticeably deeper now that Cter was hearing it properly. "It doesn't hurt, and I'm used to it. I'm sure you of all people would understand it, Cter." His eyes landed on her left arm for a brief moment. "You're the only one that can understand it."
They then landed on Sarbor. "Everyone else does their best though, regarding. The hat helps." Manny patted it and stroked its rim as if it was a cat sleeping on his lap. "They might know, but if they don't see it then we can at least pretend that it's not there." Again he looked to Cter's left arm. "Again, as you're aware of."
Cter lifted up her left arm, hanging it across her chest. She looked at it. She felt at it. As her fingers clenched within the inert leather of her sleeve she shook her head at the notion. "Yours is different, Manny. Yours is worse than mine. I have only an arm with the White Flesh. There is nothing there that is still skin or blood. For you though–"
"No. Pity," the young mage said again to remind. "Please, for my sake?"
Cter understood. "Yes, of course." Or at least, she thought she did. "Then what was it you wanted to say about you two moving into the Underground with us?" It felt very strange saying it out loud and hearing her own voice say it. "There's no going back, at all, you know?" She knew they did, but she still felt the need to ask.
"We know," answered Sarbor calmly with a small, accompanying nod. "It is something in its favor, we feel."
Yes, but… "Are you sure that you have thought this through?" It was all so sudden to Cter. That they came to here with it too. She wasn't the one that held that choice. It wasn't hers, so why did they come to her with it? To gauge the reaction? To see if they would even have a chance of being accepted into the Underground? Why? "I mean..."
Just...why?
"Three years," answered Manny with patience that had a few scratches to its calm facade. "That's how long I've been thinking on this. Two and a half years for Sarbor, but quoting numbers isn't really important as to the length. A long time, is what we have thought about this. A long time that has only solidified the idea the longer said time has become."
The young mage touched gingerly at a white scar slicing through some rough stubble he had grown out. "We do not know anyone else who harbors the same want, but we have not gone looking for any more. With us two it is enough for us, we feel." His left hand folded out towards Sarbor. "The last apprentice to the late Dr. Sallus," Manny's hand then moved towards his own chest, "and the only child from Clinic Village that still pursued magic even after being present during the birth of the First Fusion. We have both been more family with monsters than we have been with humans."
Yes, but… "Your father, Manny? Your grandmother? Aren't you family with them?" Cter heard clearly that her questions sounded pushing and almost confronting, but how else would she be able to get across how jarring this whole situation was for her! "They're not family to you anymore?"
There was a subtle flow in the white scars on Manny's face. Like a drop of water running down ice. "They're family to me and I love them like no other," he said with his head looking down. "I will be walking away from them seemingly out of nowhere for them. It will be a shock for them, but not a big-enough shock for them to follow me past the Barrier. They're..." Manny's brow furrowed.
"They're not defending me from the threat of the Fusion and the monsters anymore. They're not taking in the parent-less child from Clinic Village. My father forgave me for burning down his camp. He forgave Sarbor for telling me to so that he could escape with you back to the monsters." His White Flesh thickened up among his deepened furrow. "He killed so many monsters during the Final Battle though, and grandma watched, and ordered the fanfare once the Monster Royals put down their weapons."
The younger mage blinked without any emotions visible in his eyes.
"They have done worse than the First Fusion which they saved me from could ever do."
Before it all settled with Cter, Sarbor acted upon the silence that Manny left hanging in the air. "I have not seen Idyll in all these years I have been here at the castle as a Caretaker," he told with regret and guilt in his voice. "I'm broken, Cter. I am not the elder brother that she remembers me as. Not only with the magic in my soul, but the human that I am as well. This war..."
He swept his hand in an arc before him. "This everything." It then fell down onto his knee which he grabbed at hard akin to how Kurant would. "It is too much for me. There is too much in my wake. I can not escape it. I can not make do with it. I don't want it. I'm..." His hand's hard clench softened, but both his expression and aura curled painfully. "I'm broken. I can't deal with it all, so I want to leave it all behind."
God…
Just...why?
"Why are you putting it all on my shoulders?"
Cter's face disappeared into her hands, with both her sleeved and naked fingers digging deep into the folds on her forehead.
"Why with me?" she repeated through an exhausted and exasperated exhale. "I've been home for less than an hour and already..." That her teeth did not draw blood from how hard she bit down into her lower lip was a question for the ages. "Singe my soul, with all of this."
The two humans shared guilty glances between them. They were not glances which gave pause for their want though. They asked Cter for good reasons, and those they still believed to be good even if they felt guilty about putting it all onto Cter. That was all clear within Sarbor's aura which he loosened up for Cter to gauge at. It was Manny though that took to explaining to her, as he did not have the luxury of letting his aura speak for him.
"Because you have touched at our souls, Cter," he began after shifting his weight in his chair.
"And also because should we have brought this up to the Monster Royals or their Royal Councilors it would have comprised the unstable balance that we have at the moment between the humans and monsters. We are the Caretakers of Jarasevo, the humans that are tasked to see to it that humanity's wishes for monsterkind and the Underground are seen through."
His words didn't help Cter feel anything else about the situation.
"If we were to approach the Monster Royals or the Royal Councilors to ask of them a place in the Underground with them then that would not stay quiet for long. King Asgore and Queen Toriel are honorable, and if they suspected that we were not doing the best for humanity's vision then that might lead to humanity imposing an even stricter thumb pushing down onto you."
Cter did not lift her head out of her hands.
"We tell you precisely because you have been away for so long, Cter. We tell you so that you can tell the other Monster Mages when they arrive as well. You were the first, and Sarbor and I have awaited your arrival for years to finally get this off our shoulders. It is selfish and it is rude looking at it from another angle than ours, but who else is going to see it from our angle? We apologize for the sudden nature of it, but we do not take it back. We need your help with this, Cter. Please help us."
The sigh that followed between the Monster Mage's fingers was filled with a grumble that had the entire frame of the bed rocking. It came from the deepest depth of her soul, and had it been colored it would have poured black like the dirtiest of coal towers.
"Why do you have to be so well-spoken, Manny..." Cter muttered with a mixture of unfulfilled catharsis and a reminding maturity. She had been cut off from an opportunity to throw a well-deserved tantrum, all things considered, but with the younger mage's words the part of her that took pride in her role as a Monster Mage and all that entailed had reminded that such a tantrum would do no good.
She had her pillows next to her. She could scream into them later when she was alone.
"Because Sarbor and I genuinely need your help," answered Manny with a dull angle to his brows. The glow in his White Flesh came to be somewhat gentler than previously, but it still showed signs of being perturbed, the same as the folds on his skin.
"Being allowed to follow into the Underground is not an invitation. Being allowed does not mean that we will be able to just waltz into it should we want. It is still a place of importance to the Xoff people. Stopping the entirety of monsterkind from entering is going to be impossible for those that want to keep Mt. Ebott as such a place of importance, but the few handful of humans that want to enter it too?" The younger mage shook his head. "That will be much easier to put a hindrance to."
"Nothing's ever easy?" asked Cter despite knowing the answer to it. "Nothing's ever easy with monsters, and even less so with humans." The flat of her hands slid off her face and came together for her to rest her nose on the tip of her put-together fingers.
"I have no damn clue how you have managed to make me consider that I got the long end of the straw with being tasked of telling hundreds of villages to pack up their lives and wander to Jarasevo on a few days notice." Disbelief shone in her eyes and aura. "Because by golly..."
Another, more-guilty glance was traded between the humans, one which Cter got a full view of. With a pained grimace she rolled her head with a preemptive grunt to whatever it was that the two would put on her next. "Fine..." she sighed with her narrowed eyes squinting at the ceiling. "Go ahead."
Manny composed himself with a focused exhale in which he seemed to try and breathe out some of the glow in his scars. "It is about my magic," he said firstly with a touch on his chest. "It is...a way that I believe that I might regain control of my soul. Well, to put it more correctly, it is a way I believe that I might be able to use magic as well as keeping the Second Fusion safe within my soul." He looked at Cter with a plead in his eyes. "However, it relies on you."
"Relies in what way?" Cter was very quick to reply with a small jump forth so that she sat even more on the edge of her bed. "Relies in what way, exactly?" she added to it with a firm motion of her hand. "The way you ask it has me imagining some things that I would rather not, so please be as detailed and as careful as possible when stating it."
The younger mage seemed to expect Cter's reaction, or at the very least he had deduced that it was coming from previous context clues. After a few different grips of his hands to find one that felt the most correct he began with a small smack of his lips. "A Cooperative Connection that–"
"Nope."
Cter's suspicions seemed to be correct, unfortunately.
"I am not binding the Second Fusion into a Cooperative Connection with your soul," Cter expanded further with her refusal. "To do so will mean that the remainder of the First and Second Fusion will come together. That..." It was such a horrible idea Cter was baffled that Manny would even suggest it in the first place! Was he really that desperate as to suggest that she would do so?!
"I shouldn't even have to begin to describe how horrible an idea that is!" The Fourth Monster Mage slashed her arms out to the sides so hard they risked popping out of her shoulders. Her left arm the most, as there was a sense of soft stretching gripping on the White Flesh on her left shoulder. "Why are you even suggesting it, Manny?"
She really had no idea why!
The younger mage let the Fourth Monster Mage's outburst wash off him like water on a goose. The outburst was enough to have his wide-brimmed had begin to slide off his lap, so he laid it down onto the floor, gingerly.
"A Cooperative Connection that involves going past the Second Fusion to reach my soul in a way that necessitates me relearning magic," said Manny as he leaned up straight in his chair again. His expression was unfazed and only factual. He was determined to get his suggestion across even with the premature refusal from Cter. "In a sense creating a new soul for me, in the magical potential way. It is a possibility I have...found." The factual sense faded for a brief moment. "However..."
Sarbor took the look that moved over to him as a cue to continue. "He doesn't remember it," the doctor continued with a sincere pair of eyes towards Cter. "It's a...cycle, that's been going on with Manny for these past years. Experimentation, but with nothing to show for it. The same idea, and the same result, but without him remembering it. I am...guilty in this."
Shame was flush in Sarbor's aura, expressed on his body as him pushing his thumbs hard at each other in his balled fists. "I had to make sure. I had to be sure that it was not just a one-time fluke, and while I can excuse with the fact that I did stop humoring once I was fully sure, it took longer than I would have wanted it to."
"You have..." Cter felt the skin on her face wrinkle and furrow. "You have used your magic on Manny?" Her narrowed eyes dragged with them her head as they shifted back and forth between the two humans.
"I remember clearly the feeling when you gave me that magic to protect myself from the First Fusion," explained the doctor with an adverse look at his right arm. "It is weak, and while I have failed to do anything substantial with Manny's soul, I have been able to produce a reaction from it from the way he has instructed me to."
There was a slight shimmer around it, but Cter only noticed it from Sarbor's aura thickening around his arm as well. "Each time though Manny's forgotten what we have done. Each time it has been a failure."
Wait… "Forgotten?" Cter looked to Manny for answers for a few, long seconds before she shook the stupor off her head. "How do you mean forgotten, Sarbor?" It felt strange to talk about Manny as if he was not in the room, but if what Sarbor said was true then that might as well have been the case.
"As in..." How Idyll had it after that faithful night? "As in that you don't remember anything after magic took hold of your soul that you were not ready for?" Like how Cter had forgotten about when she made a Cooperative Connection with Dr. Sallus? "As in how the Hero of Xoff told that I had done to him during his siege of the walls of Jarasevo?"
Sarbor's mouth closed shut with a snap. During the few moments where he could not open it again to speak again he traded a focused gaze with Manny. "He...didn't," said Manny in Sarbor's stead, staring into his own thoughts just in front of him. "My father never said that, did he? Only his subordinates did. He didn't." The younger mage listened to his own words which narrowed his eyes the more he let them ruminate within him. "He didn't," he repeated more firmly. "Because he did not remember."
That might have explained some things.
To the two humans, that is.
For Cter it was just another proof of her theory. A theory that looked to be even more confirmed by Sarbor and Manny. Whatever they were doing sounded awfully close to what Dr. Sallus and Kry had done to Kurant, and even if it wasn't very close, it was still close enough for Cter's mind to recognize it. Her mind.
And her soul.
And therein lay the crux of the matter. Therein lay the base of her theory. The ground from which she would stand upon and make sure that her cycle ended and that the next one could begin.
What the mind remembers comes and is influenced from what the soul remembers.
"Was it all as if a faded dream far, far away to my father as well? Was that why he did not mention it?"
That changing the soul can change the memories of the mind as well. Same with the human soul being true for all as it is true for one, so it seemed that Cter's theory was as well. The humans forgot about their Soul Rainbow from the previous cycle. Something happened that had them all forgetting it. Something that brought magic back to zero for all humans.
As it would again.
By Cter's hand.
