"I don't want this."

The Monster Mage could not get eye contact with the blue monster.

"Please, Idyll."

Her aura slid off the blue monster's like soap against soap.

"Why have you changed so?"

The question could just as well have been aimed at the Monster Mage, but as it stood, weakly so on legs that would rather collapse, it was the blue monster that had changed more than the Monster Mage had. An unfair set of events that meant that the first time the Monster Mage had visited the home of the blue monster would be her last. Neither wanted for it. Neither wanted things to have changed like they had done.

How they met was so unlikely. How they came to be friends was nothing short of a gamble that neither someone knowledgeable of the odds or not would ever take. Finding each other after their failed attempts at providing their services only to be rejected like unripe apples for a pie. Banding together, promising to come back together and try again.

It was a promise stronger than strong. A promise that was kept through a trust so deep that it transcended the border between the two. Their souls had touched in a way that had never happened before, leading the two on a path that brought them to Jarasevo Castle.

But oh how far away their souls were as they stood on either side of the door frame between the hallway and the kitchen of the human-made house decorated to be a monster home. The Monster Mage in the blue monster's domain, and the blue monster in the Monster Mage's domain.

They had been miles upon miles apart for years on end, entire countries apart from each other, yet not as far away as when they stood not being able to see eye to eye. The blue monster's windows to her souls were closed to the Monster Mage.

Never to be opened again.

"How can you not believe that me, standing in front of you with my aura for you to take in as much you want, is not the one all the returning monsters have talked about?" The Monster Mage's left arm shone with the lines that she had worn when the two met as the memories of what was quickly losing from the Monster Mage flooded her soul and aura.

It poured and poured and poured like a barrel without a lid, drowning the air around her to plead for her friend to remember. "I'm here now! I'm in your house! I'm back! I've come back from the most difficult duty I have ever done for monsterkind! It's all good now. I'm back. I'm here again." Nothing seemed to reach the blue monster though. "Please..."

The lines on the sleeve began to fade as the plead went unanswered, settling into the walls to then disappear forever. It was not like the wooden walls hiding the brickwork of Soul's School nor the marble walls radiating with the history and dynasties of Monster Royals yore. In the human-made house the pleads and words only disappeared. Heard by no one in the moment it was summoned, and never to be heard thereafter.

"You are not the same that left the castle those four years ago," came the beginning of an explanation that knew already that it would not help convince in the slightest. There was no logic to it. No proof or conscious thread running through that could help. It was all in the blue monster's soul which she kept closed to the one she should have it opened for. Yet it remained closed for the Monster Mage, for it was not the one it knew.

"When you left, all of what I thought of you became the same as my parents. It became the same as those that had promised me that it would be fine in a week or so, but was not a mere day afterwards. The ones I had cared for and come to love, and who had loved me more in return, all but disappeared along with their promise, leaving me more alone than I had ever felt. Despite you being there for me, they were not. And then..."

The Monster Mage had already caught onto what the blue monster was doing, and as the yellow, horrified eyes shot over to the forest-green ones, the Monster Mage could do naught but shake her head in betrayal and disappointment. "I'm not Sarbor." It bared repeating, as evident by the blue monster's chiseled grin to retain what it was that she wanted to feel. "I. Am. Not. Sarbor."

"You left under the guise of helping everyone else."

"I'm not him."

"You came back different than you had left, despite promising me that it would not happen."

"I. Am. Not. Him."

"You don't look the same. You don't feel the same. Your soul is not the same."

At that, the Monster Mage could not answer.

"I know," said the blue monster, leaning an exhausted shoulder against the grainy side of the door frame. "And I have felt it for just as long within him." Her yellow eyes found nothing but fear wherever she looked. "You have my thanks for keeping it a secret from me, as otherwise I would have had to face it with him." A weak exhale fluttered out her hanging muzzle. "Like I have to now with you."

"He did it because he loved you like the little sister that you are to him." The Monster Mage took a step forwards, but it had the blue monster stepping back further. "And I have done all that I have done to protect monsterkind. Done it to protect you."

"So you are the same then?" came a comment that was supposed to be antagonistic, but only managed to sound unsure and frightened at the answer. The blue monster grabbed at her arm, squeezing it tightly.

"Done it all for everyone else when explained to anyone else, but only for me when I am the one asking. It was already too late to do it for me when Sarbor left for Clinic Hill, and it was already too late for me when you left to force every monster outside of Jarasevo to leave their homes. The Underground is still a prison for us all, and you've brought them all here for the humans' sake, and not the monsters'. Same as Sarbor did. Finding a cure for the sickness that killed our parents was not for me, or any other monster's sake for that matter. It was for the humans' sake, and was only told to me to be for my or the monsters' sake so that I wouldn't have to worry."

A shaky chuckle followed shivering arms widening like theater curtains. "Yet here we are!"

The Monster Mage's hand found her forehead to pinch shut the thoughts that began growing within her mind. The anger she had against the world and the war and the humans had begun to shift towards her friend for being so stubborn. For being so…

No! None of those thoughts! No! The Monster Mage did not want to think like that towards her friend! She needed her! She needed her oldest friend to still think of her as her oldest friend too! It was not about the blue monster being wrong, it was about the Monster Mage showing that she was wrong!

It was all on the Monster Mage's shoulder, as the blue monster's had already been broken.

"Then why..." the Monster Mage tried in earnest, but could not on her first go at it. It was a question that she felt disgusted to ask. Something that would surely make things worse, no matter if it got through to the blue monster or was rejected outright. Still though, it was a large step on the path that the blue monster had stumbled down and away from the Monster Mage. Into somewhere dark and bitter that the Monster Mage had to pull the blue monster out of.

Thinking like that though, she feared that the blue monster had already given up on it.

A timid, quivering hand motioned down the hallway fearfully, its magical lines weak and faint like constellations behind a cloudy sky. "Then why her?" the Monster Mage had to ask without any emotion to it. She had to call back on the dullness that she had called upon so many times during the previous four years. By doing so, she knew that she had already lost. She did not understand how she felt though, and among uncertainty there was always hope.

For better.

Or worse.

"She..." the blue monster began hesitantly, her mouth speaking out of courtesy rather than a want to explain. "She was something we knew of before you disappeared." A glance sauntered over to the door at the end of the hallway where it stayed for longer that was meant.

A smile, a genuine one, indulged in the brief warmth of the memories that the blue monster almost lost herself in. "We did not want to tell you since you would have enough to think about already. We did not know that it would be so...long. I did not know it would be so long." The warmth became cold once more. "Had I known, then perhaps..."

There were too many guesses for Cter to pick one.

"She arrived a month or two after you left. I know exactly when she arrived, but when you exactly left I…it's too vague for me." The blue monster did not want to spend the effort recalling.

"I wanted her to have your name to honor you. I wanted her to have the name of the Monster Mage who had done so much for monsterkind. To give me reasons to talk about all the good you had done and to reminisce about all the dinners we had together up on the roof of the castle. To tell her about you so that she would grow up motivated to do just as good, if not better for us."

It took only a blink for the hope and pride in the blue monster's eyes to fade into fear and guilt.

"But then, the monsters from the outside villages began to arrive, marched here by the humans like guards guiding prisoners to their holding cell before their already decided sentence is to be taken upon."

The Monster Mage looked through the wall towards where the staircase was. She followed it up into the roof, guessing at where the child's room would be. She could have used her magic to sense at the child's aura to have known exactly, but she did not want to. She did not want to call upon the dullness to give her the distance to do so. She had overstepped so many boundaries in the name of the Monster Royals to protect monsterkind, and with the child of her...friend she had a choice not to.

It was a choice she embraced. A choice that was her own and which she could make without anyone else being the worse for it, so she did. The child was not between her and Idyll, and the Monster Mage would have it stay that way if possible.

"Once they arrived, your name was spoken time and time again by the monsters in hushed tones about what you had promised them and what they had arrived to. Questions to the Royal Guards about other villages. Questions to me about what would be happening to them now that they had arrived in Jarasevo. Questions, loud and fearful, once they were told about the Underground. They cried out your name in anger."

The blue monster shuddered with a grit to her teeth that had her wincing as if the deafening voices were just behind her. "Each day more came. Each day more decried you. Each day I had to be the first one who they poured all their fears and helplessness onto. Weeks. Months. Years."

The Monster Mage had never seen the blue monster's muzzle contort in such anger and spite before. The flashed, uneven teeth looked to take a bite right out of the door frame as if it was soft cream, and the voice that poured between them was nothing like her own. It was low, rumbling, and with a growl that poured poison. It took a shocked breath for her voice to return to normal, but it was scarred with the anger, never leaving it again. A lingering, bitter taste from the previous meal cooked in the same pot.

"Then one day, I heard my daughter's name instead of yours." The blue monster attempted eye contact, but barely managed to move her head before it failed her.

"It was her name that the arriving monsters spoke about in anger and fear, and that I did not share with them. Their anger and emotions against the name brushed off me, for they were talking about my daughter, I heard. They could not be that angry with my daughter. She barely knew how to walk, so none of what they said in her name made any sense. It did not hurt anymore hearing her name."

The relief in the blue monster's story was brief.

"You became Monster Mage instead. As the monsters talked about the Monster Mage it became you to me. Only you, and not any of your colleagues. The same as your name had been before it became my daughter's name to my ears you became the Monster Mage, the only one there was." A sigh was exhaled unsteadily. "And the pain continued anew."

Only a small amount of the blue monster's aura was available for the Monster Mage to feel at, but even that small an aura was enough for her to feel fully disgusted and ill at the whole ordeal. If it was because she still felt sympathy or the sympathy was all gone, the Monster Mage could not tell.

It should have infuriated her. It should have had her shake her head in defiance, but she didn't. She did not have the strength to. How could she hearing her best friend tell about how she lost the meaning of her name? It was not over too. No, there was still more to the blue monster's story.

There was more that she lost.

"More time passed, and more and more monsters arrived in even greater numbers, angry and fearful towards the Monster Mage. The Monster Mage that came to their villages as a beacon of hope, but told them the complete opposite. My daughter's name had been confined to just a part of those that arrived, but it still became too much for me. Once you became the only Monster Mage to me, that only tripled the times I heard it. The same was when you had my daughter's name, but I did not hear it back then. I only heard my daughter's name and the anger aimed towards it. What had taken many months for my daughter's name took a mere few for you as the only Monster Mage."

Eyes filled with guilt closed shut in an attempt to hide at least some of it from spilling out. It was too late for it though. Too late for the guilt to be hidden by something as futile as closing the blinds to the windows of the soul.

It was too late.

For the blue monster had already lived years as what she just then tried to hide. It was something she had made to be her own.

To be...her.

The one that once carried the name given to the blue monster's daughter out of respect and honor of what that name represented. The one that then could not be seen by the blue monster as worthy of that name. The one that came to be just a title. Just a title that still had some good to it until time indiscriminately moved on to sully it too for the blue monster. There was only one thing left for the blue monster to call her previous friend so far away both in body and in actions from her.

"Then...you became..."

Not a name. Not a title.

"You became..."

But the embodiment of everything that's done wrong to monsterkind.

"You became a human to me."

The Monster Mage's vision darkened, and she fumbled with her right arm for a nearby chair to fall down into. A foul, deep ill within her spread out from the depth of her soul, reaching out into her aura as a dark cloud that forebode nothing but horror.

"You're wrong," said the Monster Mage with a choked voice.

"You can feel how wrong it is. How wrong what you're saying is. You can not only feel it, but you can see it as well. Your daughter did. Donial did. All monsters at Time's Square did it. They all felt it. They saw my magic. You feel my aura! You can see it! You've seen it so many times before." The darkened edges deepened, crawling into the Monster Mage's vision even more until all she could see was the quiver of the tears forming in a thick, watery layer. "I. Am. Not. A. Human," was said factually, with evidence bountiful that no one would ever deny that it was true. It was irrefutable.

But it was not how the blue monster felt.

It was not what she had experienced. It was not how her past four years had been. Faith had not been good, in both sense of the word, perhaps even more. The Monster Mage knew that too, but just the same as with the blue monster is what not how she felt. She had lived her life, and the blue monster had lived hers, and from what the two had experienced it was barely living at all. Surviving, and knowing that in the end it was all so that monsterkind could lose more than they had done previously.

They were both so very, very tired. So exhausted of it all. They had departed not knowing that it would be the last time they would feel such friendship between them. The Monster Mage, painting herself as the necessary evil for monsterkind to live on in peace, with the blue monster, her best of friends, living proof of the Monster Mage's success in her duty.

The strokes of the evil she had painted herself as were the aged wrinkles on the blue monster's face. The tired bend of the raven-black feathers, hanging just as exhausted as the shoulders the heavy head rested upon.

The Monster Mage's head found refuge in her hands, one magic and one human, with both struggling to hold its weight. Quiet sobs were pushed out with a choking voice that could not do anything else but weep over the loss of her friend. Weep over the loss of the one she wanted to come back to and feel like everything was like before again. The last one she had hope about who had not changed during the four years.

The blue monster allowed it for a handful of long and quiet minutes before she decided to break the silence with a scrape against the door frame as her hand slid down it as if dropped freely. "There is one thing I still want to ask of you." The hand had to come back up again as the blue monster's color drained from her face, contrasting her black feathers even more than they already did against her sky-blue hue. "Something that...might give your name back to you."

Blurry blinks was all that the Monster Mage could muster as an answer. Standing up took all her strength, fueled by the slim possibility that she already knew fully well wasn't true. The blue monster would not have said everything else otherwise. She would not have confessed to losing hope in her once-best friend. Still though, the Monster Mage listened. Despite everything, she still wanted to help.

A scrawly, white scar was dragged in the wood of the door frame as the blue monster headed down the hallway with heavy steps. Once the Monster Mage reached the fresh cuts, the blue monster was already at the bottom of the spiraling staircase, looking back. As the two met their eyes, the pale muzzle disappeared behind the golden hair. The heavy steps became quiet, bar a wooden creak from near the top of the stairs. The Monster Mage stepped over it as she knew where it was.

The upstairs the Monster Mage did not take in, as all she saw was the one open door the blue monster stood in, beckoning for the Monster Mage. She did so softly, as if not to make any more noise than necessary.

On a small, home-made bed packed with a mattress, pillows, and cover from that of Jarasevo Castle, slept a small, teal-colored monster child with only its rounded head poking out of the heavy cover it looked to have such comfort underneath.

"I want you to take back your name from her."

Through teary eyes the Monster Mage met a pair swimming even deeper in defeated drops falling off in droves.

"I want you to make her forget the human she was named after."