"You listening to me means that you're having second thoughts about whatever you're doing, you know?"
He's not waiting the slightest second to start, is he? Cter's eyes are but a bright blur when he asks. She feels on her skin his icy magic as she blindly nears him though. He does not look at her, for otherwise it would be daggers that would be stinging at her cheek and not the bite of his dense magic.
"Is that so?" replies Cter to the low, accusatory remark. Hers is light and airy, at least to a beginning. "Could it not be that I am here to tell you once more to leave Mt. Ebott? You're in grave danger here, and no, that is not a threat. It is a fact, for there is nothing you can say to convince me." She opens up her case directly, stating it not as a beginning to an argument, but as a finality. It is up to Terri to decide how to proceed.
It only takes her seeing the vague shapes of his eyes through the bright bloom to see his choice. Still though, he voices it to boot. "Come with me down the mountain, Cter. Leave the Barrier be like we all promised to. This is not where we are to be. Not now. Not ever." His ice magic pours thickly from his sleeve. It is strong enough to not only go past the barrier magic Cter had laid around it for him to help raise the Barrier, but on top of that it is pouring like heavy silt.
If their talk goes on for long there might be an avalanche down the mountain. "You also snuck away without saying anything to anyone, so I am not in the mood to grant you the benefit of doubt. I'm sure you have your reasons, but those are not worth it to grant it upon yourself the authority to act on your own about the Barrier, in any case."
Any case?
Cter was feeling his words quite heavily upon her up until then. He was always striving to be the mediator between humans and monsters. The one that could keep a cool head both during the most intense stretches of study during their time at Soul's School, but more so during the most intense stretches of conflicts between humanity and monsterkind. To have him talk against Cter in such an absolute, antagonistic manner has her losing balance for a moment.
Only for him to bring her back onto something solid she can stand on.
"Any case have been the reason for the world to put all of its weight and force upon my shoulders," Cter both replies and reminds with a sharpened angle to her eyebrow. "Every minute reason and chance the world has had it has put the most difficult tasks with me. All of its problems and all of its oppressive thumb pushing down on me."
She places her sleeved hand on her chest with a rapid tug.
"I know when it wants me to step up for I am the only one that can tackle what it needs to subdue. It has asked me more times than I can count on my fingers." Both of light-beige flesh and White Flesh. "More times than it has had any damn right to. One is too much, and how many more has it done apart from the too-many one?"
Terri's face disappears behind the opaque veil of his icy magic as his hand reaches up to pinch silently at the bridge of his nose. Like wind onto clothes hung to dry, the veil moves gently from his heavy sigh out his nose, spreading the magical snow and ice. "And how many times do you think that the world has not put its entire weight on the shoulders of others?"
His voice is irritated, but he keeps it as calm as he can.
"Have you even spared a single thought about how the horrifying events of this last half-decade-plus have affected others too? Not just listened and compared to your own, but actually considered their pain as theirs rather than on some scale against your own?"
"You have not seen any of the two fusions, Terri," Cter reminds once more with poison on her tongue.
"And what does that matter?" he counters back immediately with a sharp slash of his arm through the opaque ice magic, splitting it cleanly.
"Do I have to have seen any of the two fusions for me to understand the ramifications of their existence? Of how violently they turned this world on its head? What I have dedicated my life towards. What I have done so much good with to then learn to all be lie and that because of its existence peace between humanity and monsterkind can never be again. That is not because of the fusions because I was not there to see them? I can not be affected by them because I was not present? The thousands upon thousands of monsters that are now locked within the Underground behind the Barrier are not affected by the two fusions because they were not there to see them?"
Terri does not give Cter time to respond. He does not want to give her any time to.
"If you are here because you believe that your pain is greater than anyone else's then that only has me more worried about what it is you've come up here to do." Neither gives the Royal Mage of Ice any time for himself, and has to breathe in sharply and greedily to continue on. As he begins again, the cold air of his magical making has a grand cloud bursting out of his mouth.
"Do not believe for a second longer that it is only you that have had years upon years of constant strife looming over and around you wherever you've turned, Cter! You're not the only one that the fusions have affected, so do not make choices as if you are the only one that has been."
The cave that Cter just exited is dark and impossible to see into as she turns her head over her shoulder to see into it. Not even the sunlight that she placed into the open hole can be seen from how bright the cliff faces has become with the flat rays of the sun dancing with its many glimmers. "I am not equal," states Cter with a distance to her words. "You can't reason for me to have gone through the same that you have when the topic you're trying to dissuade me from is the Barrier that we created using my magic. My magic that I gave to you and which you still have on you."
White tendrils roll up her robe over her inert sleeve before pulling it slowly off her barrier-formed arm glowing with the same harsh white as the Barrier pulsates with deep into the cave. "Do not tell me that you are the same as me when where you have stood is on the side of the humans all these years, Terri."
As she lets the barrier magic keeping her White Flesh in the shape of the arm it swallowed, the White Flesh becomes amorphous, hanging off her shoulder heavily with its viscous weight. It tears and reforms like stretched clay as it hangs, and Cter feels every single fiber breaking and reforming. "Do not tell me that you have given as much as I have."
It takes a few seconds for Terri to come to grasp with the sight of the White Flesh hanging off Cter's shoulder. "This is how the fusions looked, Terri," she takes the opportunity to let him know as he reels from the disgusting sight. "This is what I have been carrying on me and in my soul for all these years. Should I let it take over me completely to convince you? Should I let myself become the Third Fusion so that you will believe me?"
"No," he refutes with a sturdy shake of his head. "No, you should not." He lifts his head up, with steeled eyes piercing into Cter's. "What you should do is come with me down the mountain." There isn't the slightest movement in his eyes that tugs towards the abhorrent movements on Cter's White Flesh. "That is all you should do. Come with me, and leave the Barrier alone." He is not giving up on trying to save Cter.
Or is it himself he's trying to save?
"Do you know what it is I am going to do?" It is really a flip of the coin whether or not he knows of it. She has not told a soul, neither monster nor human, about what it is she's to do, but if he has followed her all the way up Mt. Ebott he at least has an idea of what it is she's to do. "About what the legacy I am going to leave behind for the future is?" She can tell him if he does not know. She can tell him everything, really.
For he will not remember afterwards.
"What it is specifically you have come up here to do I do not know of." Rather brashly Terri begins to takes steps to position himself between Cter and the cave. He walks as if stepping through water with how much it has his aura and heart racing, but still he stands himself between Cter and the way to the Barrier.
"What I only know of is that I can't allow you to do it. You used your magic to sneak away from down there, to come up here unnoticed. I noticed though, and I say again that nothing good can come of the Barrier. That too I have noticed. Nothing good was the reason that it was raised, and nothing good is why it stands. We should leave from here and let it be."
That she can agree with. It is what she's about to make sure will happen, after all. With his permission or not.
"We should only remember the Barrier as a testament to our failures, Cter."
That she can not agree with though.
"And you would believe that the Barrier will be left alone, Terri?" poses Cter with a sweep of her right hand over the horizon that is only known to humans now. The warm sunlight feels different on her right hand than it does on her left. It feels more natural, more comforting. On her left arm she can feel as if the sun rays are piercing through the White Flesh.
There is a hollow sensation beginning to take root on her shoulder too, so Cter might not have a lot of time to humor the Royal Mage, but then again the hungrier the Second Fusion will be when she begins her legacy, the better. She used up her very last emotional ink at the bottom of the mountain, and that was a good few hours ago.
She should have packed a bit more to eat and drink before she set off, she only now realizes. "Would you believe that the locked-away source of human magic will be left alone for all eternity out of the goodwill of the humans? That they are all going to come together and cooperate in finding ways to go on without any of the magic as they know it? Who is to say that a new county general some three or four generations ahead won't argue for the idea to try and break the Barrier for some short-sighted, egotistical gain?"
Unlike Cter, Terri has been human all of his life. If even she can see that there will come a point in time where the shock of the fusions and the ensuing war will fade and become history, with the Barrier standing there still without the threats of its existence still relevant, then surely he must see that too? It is in human nature to forget what is dangerous in the long term and make the same mistake for some guessed-at gain in the short term.
It's the reason human magic was rediscovered and this whole damn mess happened to begin with!
"Do you eat fly fungi, Cter?" comes a rather dismissive reply.
"The mushrooms with the red cap and the white dots on it? They were discovered to be poisonous in distant, ancient times, and yet we still today consider them dangerous despite the fact that we have medicine to cure them today? I told you long ago the first time you visited Fenkeep Castle that my family cultivates medicinal herbs, and the effects from those mushrooms we know full well how to grow and how to brew to counteract the effects from the poison, yet we have not grown them for decades. A handful of those medicinal herbs I have seen grow up here too, yet I have had no reason to pick them at all."
He waits for Cter to look over her shoulder towards him, but she doesn't. It has his voice jump in irritation, and he sighs with disappointment at her. "Because we humans know that the fly fungi are poisonous and that even though the danger of us dying from them are not that big of a deal in our modern day, we still. Do. Not. Eat. Them."
Is he comparing the dangers of mushrooms to the dangers of the Barrier? For that Cter actually has to look over her shoulder to see if he's being serious with that.
"Because we as humans have learned that it is dangerous and to boot for them to be dangerous would require us to go out of our way to do harm and would also raise a mountain of suspicion because everyone knows since childhood that they are dangerous!"
He...is seriously comparing mushrooms to the Barrier.
"Curiosity is bred from a lack of knowledge," the Royal Mage continues, swiping his ice-swirling arm in a horizontal arc in front of him. A second passes with Cter looking at the ice crystals expecting Terri to make a diorama of sorts out of them like she did her crystal magic, but nothing forms. The ice magic melts quickly from the direct sun with an outline where Cter's shadows provides shelter.
"We can only be sure that no one comes to visit the Barrier if everyone knows of it. It is impossible for everyone to forget about it. Our only choice is to be honest about it and explain so much about it that it becomes boring despite the context of its existence. We need to make it the same as the fly fungi. We need to accept it as a part of nature, and make it the most common of knowledge that it is dangerous. That is the only way for the monsters to know peace."
Terri points his entire arm behind him.
"And that you are not planning to do inside there. Making everything widely known by doing something secretive on your own is not how you go about this at all!"
Correct. "That I am not planning to do with the Barrier, no." However though, before Terri can retreat his pointing arm and sigh with relief that he's gotten through to her, Cter makes another, slower sweep of her right arm. "I am going to do what you say is impossible."
"You're..." The Royal Mage knows that he should not ask, but he's still the same human that was at the top of the class at Soul's School. He wants to know. He wants to learn and to understand. "You can't make everyone forget, Cter. Someone somewhere will remember. Someone somewhere will carry this with them."
"That may be so," she agrees, and has accepted. The change she's to impart upon all humans will not be instant for all. "However though, all those that have a stake in magic and in monsterkind will forget." The human encampment is small from so high up Mt. Ebott. Like ants the humans all scurry about, preparing for the day when they have been told that they will be joining monsterkind.
Somewhere down there, most likely in one of the biggest tents, are the human kings and queen preparing to tell everyone that there will be no human joining with monsterkind. Either that or they have already started deliberations about how to divide up Monster Country between their kingdoms. "The ones that it is the most important that they forget are down there. They're close enough that they'll forget immediately."
Is Terri thinking about pushing Cter off the cliff's edge? Is he thinking of committing something heinous for the greater good according to him? Will he do the same as Cter? Is he the same as her?
Cter takes a step closer to the cliff's edge, basking deeper in the soft wind that's breaking against the mountain wall like waves on the shore.
"Human magic has been forgotten once already, so something similar has happened before. Whether or not it is the same as what I am to do I do not know, but it is possible to lock memories within the soul. Magic is memories, and the inverse is true as well. For a memory to be true to a person they need it both in their soul and in their mind for it to exist. If the two are not the same, then the memory will not be obtainable. It will be locked away."
"Something as deep as the existence of monsterkind surely can't–"
"I have removed the name of a monster child, Terri," Cter states with a furrowed turn of her head. The loose side of her hair casts shadow over her expression which she holds hard towards him. "If the theory holds for something as personal and self-defining as a name then the existence of magic and monsters will work as well."
She has more too.
"It works for humans as well. I am capable of changing the memories of humans as well." Whether or not Terri thinks that she has done it to him does not matter. He would not be able to trust her if she said that she had not done it to him. "I have changed your magic and the magic of five other mages, and since magic are memories..."
There is more cold coming from the Royal Mage as he steps closer to Cter. "You had to touch at us though, Cter. You had to make contact with us and have us give ourselves up to your magic! You won't be able to do that to everyone."
Again, he's correct. "Yes." Again though, it's not what Cter is planning to do. "I have already tracked down every single monster physically already, so I'll be damned before I go about doing that one more time with all the humans." She throws her right hand in the air, whisking it around. "I don't have to though." She then places her hand on her chest. "The human soul will help me with this. Whether it likes it or not, it has already done something similar for generations upon generations already."
Cter knows that Terri is smart, and just as she guesses, he figures it out quickly. "The...acclimatization towards magic?" There is a pause. "And with the monsters gone, so is their magic."
"But not how our souls have acclimatized to there being magic in the air," Cter finishes with an approving nod. She's kept her legacy secret for so long, and now that Terri is putting the pieces together the same as she did when formulating it so long before, it shows to Cter that her logic is sound. He's finding the same logic as well! It has her relaxing slightly, taking a moment to enjoy that she's not the only one agreeing that it would work.
Perhaps alone in agreeing that it should be the way things work, but hey, one step at a time.
"And with the magic in the air gone our souls will take anything they can get."
Cter touches harder at her chest.
"Even mine will eat it all up. Even mine will eat up the spell I will weave to lock away all that is known about monsterkind and magic. Those that need it the most will be the ones most directly affected by it. They in turn will act as conduits both with their souls and with their mouths to tell others that monsters and magic have never existed. Those humans that have not been affected much by monsters in their lives will need little convincing both via word and via my spell to agree that monsters have never existed before. The kings and queens as well as their advisers and highest-ranking members from their armies are all here, down in the larger tents of the human encampment. Their influence, charismatic, political, and the magical that I will add, will be enough to convince."
Cter can't help but chuckle to herself. Hearing herself say it all out loud feels so...strange. It feels so relieving that she can do it, because there is no one to stop her now. She can scream it out to all of the humans in the many tents at Mt. Ebott's foot and there will be nothing they can do to stop her. Everything is coming together for her! Her legacy is finally at hand!
"A plague."
What?
"It's a plague." The Royal Mage's icy fog hardens solid, dropping in irregular clumps of ice that shatter against the magically smoothed ground. "It is a plague that you're describing, Cter." His voice throws angry clouds of condensation from between his gritted teeth. "Can't you hear it yourself?! Can't you hear that you're thinking of infecting everyone with a magical plague? A magical miasma that will attack the human soul rather than the body? How can you…"
The grip Terri takes on his forehead is tight and desperate.
"After everything..."
His aura is swimming in conflicting emotions all ravaging for supremacy. It has his magical ice turning opaque and cloudy, impure. The cliff wall his back finds is jagged, but he falls onto it for support regardless. "All of this began with a plague. All of this is because of a cursed plague! And now you want to make an even worse one to solve it all, Cter? Don't you..."
"It won't be worse," defends Cter after a second or two of trying to lift up her eyebrows that had sunk with her heart. She shakes her down-facing head. "It won't kill anyone."
"How do you know that?!"
"Because it won't!"
The two mages' voices are equally loud, and fight against the other as they travel deeper into the cave. It's only when they fade completely that Cter can continue.
"It won't kill anyone because that is not what I will design the spell to do!" Her explaining is not as calm and controlled as she would have wanted it to be. Terri might have found his way to begin convincing her, after all. That...that she can't allow! Shakily she exhales off as much of the shock from his parallel as possible.
"It will not do anything to the health of the humans. It will only be their memories of the monsters. Whatever it is that they forget about the monsters they will fill in on their own with some other possible explanation. It works." Cter knows. "I..." She knows that it does from her own this time.
"I remember vividly all that happened during the night when Idyll's soul almost absorbed mine. I should not. I can not! It is impossible for me to remember, for I can not remember events that have been less stressful to my soul. What I remember from that faithful night is...something my mind has filled in. It feels real to me though. It feels correct, and that everyone will feel too after a while. I have thought of nothing else but this for these last four, five years, Terri. I've thought of everything."
The Royal Mage still is not convinced. Still he shakes his head with defiance and points to the Barrier behind him far into the cave with his entire arm. "You would have already done it had you thought of everything, Cter." His remark is direct and cutting, with his narrowed eyes as cold and solid as the tips of his orange hair.
"It's too late now. You know that you have second thoughts about this. I can see it in your eyes." The cold and solid once again becomes denser as Terri holds his gaze through the windows to Cter's soul. Through them he sees a drop of oil within water that has grown to no longer be able to be called a drop. It's grown enough that the water around it has receded. Drained?
Or absorbed?
"So that's..." stumbles out of the Royal Mage's thinking mouth. More thoughts than he can handle spill out into his aura as contorted flakes of magical snow that cascade in an angled dance as he once more has to grab at his head to keep the flooding thoughts inside of it. "That's why he could..." Terri looks through the edge of the cliff towards the unaware human encampment. "Manny." He blinks. "You took it from him." He blinks more because it is not helping. "You took the Second Fusion from him." He can not fathom it. "That was why he could be the seventh mage for the Barrier. Because you..."
And it is exactly that he can not fathom it that Cter is worried that Terri might be able to convince her. He would not do something like she has done. Never. Again, he can not even fathom it. He has been spared the direct horrors of the First and Second Fusion, and for that he has been able to be one of the few rational voices throughout the entire war. Cter wishes, with both her heart and soul, that she could be the same. That she too could not fathom what it is that she has done. She knows why she has done it all though. She knows it more than anything else!
As well as why she is still going through with her legacy.
"You have it in your soul, Cter. The Second Fusion!" The sway to Terri's icy cloud betrays that he's taking a step back in fear. "It's not locked up like Manny did. You're letting it… You have been letting it feed on you! During the Barrier, when we raised it, was it there too? Is it..." His eyes are widened as he looks deep into the mouth of the cave. It looks to be swallowing him as he startles a step away from it. "Is it a part of the Barrier?"
No.
"Not yet."
"Not..." Terri's neck is made out of stone when he turns back over to Cter. "Not yet?" he asks, despite knowing the answer fully. "You're planning to put the Second Fusion into the Barrier?" A deep tear in Cter's left arm reforming poorly steals Terri's attention. "And the first one too?"
Cter looks to her left arm and its constant state of falling apart and reforming differently. Of how it becomes heavier when it breaks up, and lighter when it reforms. Of how it tugs when it is briefly without movement and without any sense of feeling when it is twitching and bubbling.
"They are needed for my spell to seek out more humans souls. The killing intent from them will reach as far as needed, and as fast as needed. Their killing intent will be what spreads between the human souls, just like it did at the Final Battle. The killing intent will be the wagon to carry with it my spell, and with that, human magic as we know it will be forgotten until the humans in the future will be able to use it better. When they can prove that they will not make the same mistakes that we can, and have, then they will learn. When they wield magic differently than us, then they will learn how we failed with how we wielded ours."
She lets some of the White Flesh pour between her fingers of beige flesh. It feels both rough and smooth at the same time. "The fusions' hunger to absorb more souls is what will guarantee that every human will forget." A white, oily stain spreads out as she places her right hand onto her chest. "Even my soul." The stain then fades away into nothing as she flicks off the White Flesh still stuck on her right hand. "Even it will be affected by this. I can't be allowed to remember either."
Once more Terri is left stunned beyond his comprehension at what Cter is saying. What she's planning. What she's too far gone to now consider with honest intent. It has him putting more of his weight against the jagged cliff he's almost fainting onto.
"You might have felt it too when we formed the Barrier. I'm sure the others did as well, which is partly why I did not tell anyone." A very, very small part, but still a part. "I let it out during the formation of the Barrier, and now it wants for nothing more than to feed the appetite it has built. I need it hungry. I need it starving so that when it goes out to seek human souls it will stop at nothing to find every single one."
And that is not all.
"You already have a part of it in you, Terri," adds Cter with a casual throw of her right arm towards him. "You already had the Second Fusion's presence touch your soul. I needed for it to do so as well with the six of you. Five, to be exact, since it already was familiar with Manny. You others though that helped with the Barrier it now knows of. When I go to use the Barrier as the first conduit for my spell the Second Fusion will connect itself to the magic of all of us that helped raise it. It is only for it though. I did not–"
"Lies."
A slight startle runs through Cter, and she staggers a small step back. "N-No?" She did not take any of their magic, only the Second Fusion did. She made sure to focus fully on letting the drop of oil float to the top and take it all in. "I'm not lying."
"Then you're wrong." It takes a stumble for Terri to find footing, but once he finds it he motions with confidence towards the magically hidden road he and Cter ascended up the mountain from. "Because I felt Lerjung's magic plenty and constantly as I walked up here. It was how I found out you snuck out down in the encampment." His confident arm curls. "I felt Lerjung's magic even though I knew that she was on the other side of the camp. It was a...shock finding that illusion of yours." His brow lowers with discomfort. "It...moved."
Re-enacting the movements Cter had given to it, similar to how Donial had shown her with stasis magic. Applying it to Lerjung's illusion magic was similar enough, and worked, evidently.
"And this you want to just throw away, Cter?" Terri's tone is different from what Cter expected. It is not accusing like before, but rather...pleading? And not towards Cter, but for her? Is he trying a different angle?
"You're saying that human magic needs to change for you to feel comfortable with it existing, so be here then and lead us towards that. This magic of yours, it's brilliant. You, Kry, Kurant, you all three know of human magic more than any of us Royal Mages, so teach us about it instead! If one of the first human mages saw what we were capable of today, what you are capable of today, then they would never believe that it was human magic. They would even doubt that it was monster magic too!"
Cter can only shake her head. Shake her head and snap her fingers to summon a sparking ember which flickers breathlessly before finding enough air to grow into a sturdy flame in her palm. "There is a difference between making more complex fire magic."
The fire contorts into the shape of two Boss Monsters dancing as if on ice skates over the flesh of her palm and through the lines before Cter blows them out with a quick and focused puff. Their coordinated dance is in stark contrast to her left arm which tears off in chunks as she raises it up with her softened shoulder. "And the fundamentals of how we understand the nature of human magic to begin with."
"Yes," Terri agrees.
But not fully.
"And this understanding we can explore. This understanding we can come to grips with." Cter shakes her head again at his choice of words. "Like you said, we have forgotten how human magic was before, and we can take do what you want the future to do. We still have the old scrolls from way before when human magic was different. The memories of which might be locked away in our souls the same you want to lock away the memories of our cycle's magic."
Terri points with all of his hand, and with his lean forward into his point the icy fog hides all but his sharp-angled brow which he's leaned ahead. "Have you considered that perhaps you are repeating the mistakes of the past by doing all of this, Cter?"
That…
Yes, yes, she has. "Yes, I have."
Because what she is doing is different. She is making a contingency plan for when things will be better. She is leaving behind a legacy for the future to discover. Not discover either, but something that will reveal itself to the future once the time is right. They won't have to go look for it. They won't have to find some old scrolls in a locked-away part of a castle and…
And…
…
The Royal Mage sighs deeply as his arms falls down to his sides, carving through the opaque fog. "I can tell just by this that you've not." Whirls on either side of the carved fog bend it open wider. "And with those slumped shoulders you've found more similarities just by hearing me mentioning it, and not by thinking about it."
Terri can only shake his head at how deflated Cter became the instant after she meekly lied that she had thought about it. "You are going to find many, many more if you actually think about it, Cter. More than should be enough to weigh over to the other side. To the right side, Cter. To the side where we together correct the mistakes that have been made, both today and in times forgotten."
Yes, but…
"This thinking of yours is that of the same that queen Toriel and king Asgore asked of all monsters. It is something that monsterkind has to strive for in order for this hard-fought, yet unfair peace has been achieved." A handful of dense fog crash against Terri's chest as he brings his hand up to it, spreading out over his entire torso.
"We have to let things in the past stay in the past, no matter how much it pains us to do so. We can not move ahead if we keep grudges alive." His expression hardens into forceful grit. "It is the toughest step we have to take in all of this, because all of this should be over by now. The Barrier is raised."
It should not be possible for his shoulder to move so fast without hurting as he throws his arm behind him into the cave haphazardly yet again. "It is up! There can no longer be any risk of a fusion no more. The monsters are gone from the Surface, and there are no humans at all in the Underground."
There is a pained quiver to his arm as he brings it back slowly with a tensed fist. "Yet we can not let things be. We still have work to do. We still have to make sure this peace lasts." The quiver relaxes pleadingly. "And that we can only do if we confront what we have done rather than try to erase and escape from it."
"And the Barrier is not the epitome of erasing and escaping?" Apparently not, according to the Royal Mage of Ice. "I am merely following along the path that you humans have paved. This is what has been decided and agreed upon." Cter does not look at the Royal Mage as she talks. She doesn't… It's not...what she wants to argue the side of. Has he flipped it? How? "I am following the orders King Asgore and Queen Toriel gave me. I need to help monsterkind forget the past. To have them let go of it and–"
"And yet you still wear that brooch in your hair."
She…
"You wear that crystal brooch in your hair," Terri repeats with a distinct and sharp flick of his hand. "While you're arguing once more about making sure that everyone should forget you still keep that on. The crystal brooch that was the first show of the power of your newfound crystal magic." He watches as Cter reaches up to touch it, jerking back her timid fingers as if its jagged appearance are thorns.
"A memento of your time spent in service of monsterkind. A reminder about your title as a Monster Mage. This you still wear on you while arguing that everyone should forget, for it is the greater good if monsterkind and magic is left behind. You can't see it, Cter, but for me it has shined all this time we've been talking. Always told me that you truly do not believe fully in your plan. You would have found the strength to take it off had you been fully convinced about this."
B-but...she...she is! "I...I..." Cter's breath is not under her control, and interrupts her as she tries to fight back the looming sense taking over her. Heavy like a stone blanket it pours over her, and within its oppressive weight she feels her determination about her plans fading away.
"Help me, Cter."
Terri's step closer to her is not a full one, only half.
"Help me make things right, please. You don't have to do this. Just follow me back down the mountain and we can make the future a better place than today. The Monster Royals did not mean forgetting in the literal sense, and you know that fully, Cter. They told their people to leave every grudge and every anger that they have behind them so that they can find the light in the dark that they were confined to, and not to bring anymore dark with them. For us still up here on the Surface we have to honor that by making sure that their magic still lives on with us humans. Not their magic which could conjure fire and ice, but their magic which we shared with as friends and family. To do so we have to remember that they were good. We have to remember that they were wronged, and we have to make that right. Dooming another is not making things better. It never has, and never will be. Be strong, Cter. Make things better."
With trembling breaths Cter stares at her hand shaking just as much. She's carried so much for so long, and now that Terri's taking a stand against her with a sturdiness that rivals that of even Mt. Ebott she…
"Just take my hand, Cter. This all began for you when you cheated with my answers, so please don't let me regret not telling on you." Terri chuckles slightly. "Sorry, I… I just want you to trust me, okay? Let's go, Cter."
She…
"Let's get down this mountain."
She feels fear.
"Let's leave the monsters to themselves."
From the depths of her soul and her heart which has contained it all for so long it spills like a bursting dam. Torrents of dread cover her aura, drowning her body in helpless despair. Her steps are staggered, each one as if the rocky ground will disappear as soon as she steps her foot down.
She can see the outstretched hand of the Royal Mage through the welling tears in her eyes. Each uncontrolled blink has her closer and closer to it. Each step has her lips struggling to form the words that will solidify what he has done for her.
"T-Thank...you."
He does not respond to Cter's appreciation. With an expression more frozen than his choked-up magic he can only stare into the sun beginning to touch at the top of Mt. Ymmet. He stands still for an eternity as thoughts and feelings swim in his head like a whirlpool in a storm. His lips quiver as well, but not the same as Cter's does. There is a strange warmth radiating from them, something he's never felt before in his life. All because of Cter.
"T-Thank...you...so much."
And that her voice is behind him.
The strange warmth burns. The rage that's built explodes. "Cter!" the Royal Mage roars towards the fluttering display of purple fabric settling down just as his head turns around. The anger and panic on his lips thins them out into a bared shout that echoes loudly. "Don't do it!"
But only back at him as it bounces against the wall of translucent crystal magic.
"Stop!" Terri throws more against the solid magic only to have his scream recoil from the magic and hit him in the face. His fist he throws immediately after, but it too bounces off. "It won't work, Cter!"
The Royal Mage's figure is slightly distorted through the crystal magic as Cter looks back at him chipping at the crystal magic with icicles in his hand. Each desperate stab he takes at it has the ice magic shatter, but it reforms immediately for the next hurried, violent attempt. "The world has put its weight on my shoulders for too many times, Terri," she laments quietly. "I am choosing to do so myself now."
"That's different!" Terri's panicked visage is briefly obscured by the opaque circle his shout breathes onto the cooled surface of the crystal wall. "You can't make the choice for everyone! It is unfair! It is wrong!"
"And I will make it right, Terri." Before she turns away from him she pauses for a brief second, thinking. "Don't..." It feels so strange to ask him, but really why shouldn't Cter? "Don't run away, please. I...I don't know what will happen to me when I...I..." She looks to her left arm and its harsh, white glow. "I will need your help. I...I don't want to die. I don't want anyone to die. So please," through tears she pleads with the Royal Mage she has locked away from stopping her, "be here and help me afterwards. I'm...afraid."
And it is all thanks to him.
"If you're afraid then you know that it is wrong!" A pained grunt and a deep, hard thud emerges when he forces his shoulder against the crystal wall with all his might and weight. "You feel it too that it is wrong! That is why you are afraid! Cter! Please! Listen!"
She does.
And she agrees.
For this genuine fears of hers she will be able to share with everyone. A genuine fear of Mt. Ebott. She will not only be able to make everyone forget, but she will be able to make everyone fear it too. All of her soul and heart is frightened beyond belief. Her entire reasoning for having done what she has done lays shattered like Terri's icicles. He did everything to help her. Everything to make sure that Cter's legacy will be stronger.
Her heart and soul are terrified.
"You..." only barely managed through the crystal wall along with a soft scratching sound as the Royal Mage's hands slip off. "...Cter..."
She kneels quietly at the large hole, covering it up with the magic she can spare. It will work for a while, but mostly she does it because she said before that no one would see it, and now someone has. Therefore she has to cover it up.
Hopefully the Cter that will not be her won't trip into it on the way out.
Hopefully there will be a Cter after this.
It does not take many more steps into the dark of the Barrier cave before Terri's voice disappears. First his weak pleads, but then also his screaming begs. There is quiet in the dark cave, with only Cter's footsteps and her frightened breaths to keep her company. It is not her that is taking the final steps, for had it been she would have frozen in the overwhelming fear that's gripping her tight. The crystal wall it was not her that raised to keep Terri away either. The magic to cover up the large hole was hers though, for that she decided upon before she inverted her soul's water and the drop of oil within it.
"You're hungry, aren't you?"
The harsh white of her left arm drowns underneath the blazing white of the Barrier. Its impossible form and shape has even the Second Fusion pausing to take in the powerful magic that has formed it. The pause gives Cter time to pour all of her memories into her magic.
"Bring me closer and I'll allow you to feed on everyone."
Her magic she pours into her spell.
"I'll allow you to eat as much as you can."
Her fear she pours into her spell.
"Take mine first."
Her spell she pours into her soul.
"Take all of it!"
Her soul she pours into her left arm.
"And bring peace back to monsterkind!"
And her left arm she pours into the Barrier.
