The two monks filled the walk over to Azama’s room with idle chatter about different magical healing techniques. Wrys was particularly interested in how Azama’s Martyr worked, and was surprised to find out it was effectively the gods rewarding him for taking blows in place of others. Azama laughed, mentioning that his body’s resiliency towards physical damage made him particularly suited for the job, and then noted that an armored healer might be able to pull it off a bit better.

“An armored cleric?” Wrys laughed, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of one of those.”

“I’ve heard that there are clerics that wear light armor and brandish axes in Ylisse, but I don’t think any have been summoned yet. That aside, until Azura arrived on that pegasus, you would have been hard pressed to make me believe there could be a dancer who could fly around on a pegasus. Quite frankly, I’m inclined to believe that anything goes in Askr.”

Azama opened the door to his room, inviting Wrys in.

“Now that you mention it, this kingdom really does have its oddities.”

“Indeed. I never thought I’d see the day where Lady Sakura would be dressed like… that,” Azama shuddered, thinking of how Queen Mikoto would have never approved of such an outfit. He understood that Sakura was getting older and that the costume she wore for the fall festival could have been far, far worse, but it wasn’t something Lady Sakura would have normally wore. Did that dragon girl coerce her into wearing it? Surely it couldn’t have been Jakob or Henry…

Wrys paused, looking around Azama’s room.

“You can request more furniture for your quarters from command if you’d like. Anna is relatively stingy with money, so you’d probably have more luck with Sharena.”

“Ah…"

It had never really occurred to Azama, but his room was far more unfurnished than Wrys’. Beyond his bed, the only things in the room was a small table with a few texts on it and a stool. There was also a parcel Azama didn’t recognize on the table, which he made note to open later.

“I appreciate the suggestion, but I don’t have much need for more furniture. I guess I just like to live simply.”

Wrys paused, as if deep in thought. “That’s fair. Do you need anything else?”

“I think I’m fine, thanks.”

“I’ll be taking my leave then.”

Wrys began to head out of the room, but stopped just before he shut the door behind him. He slowly turned his head towards Azama, his face adorned with a sad, almost melancholic expression.

“I’m not sure if this is weighing upon you,” for the first time that day, Wrys’ tone was somber, as if he were delivering bad news to the next of kin of a recently departed ally, “but I don’t think any of us blame you for the choices Kiran has made. Please be sure to get some rest, Azama.”

And, as soon as he had said it, Wrys was gone.

A moment passed.

“Eh?”

Azama was shocked Wrys had seen straight through him. He had tried to, as the younger Heroes would sometimes say, ‘play it cool’, but Wrys hit him right where it hurt.

Azama began to pace back and forth, trying to clear his head. Would-

Before Azama could even begin to sort through his thoughts, a loud crash resounded through the wall, coming from Hector’s room.

“I’ll never be able to sleep like this,” Azama shook his head, lamenting how despite everything his situation has only gotten worse.

‘Ah, Wrys mentioned the new wing of the castle, maybe that’ll be a good place to try to-’

Another, quieter crash echoed through the wall, derailing Azama’s train of thought once again.

“Anywhere would be better than here,” he said with a sigh.

Azama stopped himself before he left the room, remembering the unopened parcel on his desk. He picked up the note attached to it, and with a chuckle, recognized it as the stationary Lady Hinoka uses.

‘Azama,’ the note began.

‘I’m unsure if you’ll be feeling better by the time you’ll be reading this, but if you’ve made it back, I can only take it to mean that you’ve recovered a little bit. I’m unsure how long Wrys’ treatment will take, so I made sure to grab you a loaf of bread from the dining hall in case you end up missing dinner.’

As if reminded that it has been completely empty for hours, Azama’s stomach rumbled and he was overtaken by a hunger unlike any he had felt before. Ripping open the package, he found a fresh loaf of bread, still warm to the touch. If he had a single ounce of patience remaining in his exhausted, hungry body, he would have been mortified by the way he ravenously consumed the loaf, but Azama’s patience was tested time and time again over the course of this awful, awful day and he simply couldn’t bring himself to care. Having finished off the bread and sated his hunger, he turned back to the note and resumed reading.

‘I hope you don’t eat it all at once so you don’t upset your stomach again, but knowing how much value you place on your asceticism, there’s no way that’s going to be an issue.’

Azama did have to admit that filling his stomach to the brim so soon after having involuntarily emptied it was probably not the best of ideas and smiled bitterly at how Hinoka’s prediction would have been entirely on the mark in any other situation.

‘I’m glad that you’re alive, but you need to start being more careful. I already have my hands full worrying about Setsuna, and it should be the other way around!

Stay safe,

Hinoka’

Azama stood there for a moment, digesting both the bread and what Hinoka had written. He and Setsuna were both, admittedly, considerable headaches for the person they were supposed to protect. They’d always get the job done, for sure, but Lady Hinoka must have on multiple occasions considered-

Yet another crash echoed through the wall, causing Azama to flinch. Frustrated with how he couldn’t even maintain a normal line of thought, he grabbed a candle and made his way towards the foretold ‘new wing of the castle’.

---

It being so late at night -already nearly 6 hours past sundown, Azama guessed- the halls of the main castle were practically devoid of any sign of life. Azama could hear idle chatter coming from a few of the rooms he passed; Ryoma and Xander seemed to be engaged in an argument over whether they would be playing chess or shogi tonight in lieu of drawing swords right then and there, and Mia was attempting to coerce Ike into challenging her to a duel. As he moved further and further from the residential wing, those voices faded until the loudest thing Azama could hear was his own breathing.

The dim candlelight illuminated the worn stones of the corridors, and Azama sighed. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought that the castle had been abandoned well over a decade ago. The building itself was supposedly perfectly safe to be in, but it was in such a state of disrepair that he couldn’t understand why the ‘zoning committee’ Anna mentioned -whatever that was- would approve the construction of a new wing of the castle when the main building itself was so clearly falling apart.

“Maybe the library would be empty this time of night…” Azama absentmindedly mumbled. Since it was so late, most people would have already retired to their quarters, and it was on the way to the vaguely described ‘north side of the castle’, so he resolved to take the brief detour to see if it was usable tonight. If it wasn’t, he could always just start looking around the new wing.

The windows lining the corridor leading to the library opened up to the courtyard, giving him glimpses of the night sky. There wasn’t a single cloud in sight and countless stars sat speckled across the heavens, but barely any light entered the hallway, forcing Azama to strain his eyes in the dim candlelight to avoid stumbling over the uneven stones that made up the floor.

“Must be a new moon…” Azama mumbled, having reached the library.

It seemed quiet enough, so Azama slowly pushed the rightmost door open. It creaked bit, as doors several times older than he was were wont to do, and Azama slid in through the gap between the two doors, quietly shutting it behind him.

A few candles dimly lit the room, and Azama was surprised find Faye, standing in the middle of the room, something red splattered across her face. She must have pushed the tables out of the way, since the center of the room was clear.

“Ah, sorry, didn’t realize the room was being used. I’ll-”

Azama did a double take.

Faye was holding a knife, its blade dripping with something red, the same red liquid smeared across her face. Azama could barely make out a circular pattern drawn out along the floor, and it slowly dawned upon him what Faye was probably attempting to do.

They stared at each other for a moment.

Faye brought her hand to her chin, tilting her head slightly, as if realizing she had misread a recipe and ended up overcooking that night’s dinner.

“I probably should have locked the door, huh?” The stark contrast between Faye’s carefree tone and the scene displayed before him set off every warning siren in Azama’s head, and his mind started to race a mile a minute for the second time that day.

‘Should I run? Will she pursue? Will I be able to outrun her? Are my chances any better if I stay here?’

Choosing to flee, Azama frantically fumbled for the doorknob, cursing as he was unable to find it in the low lighting.

“Wait!” Faye exclaimed, starting towards Azama, “I-”

“Put that knife down before you come any closer! Please!” Azama shouted, backing up against the doors and dropping the candle he was holding in his panic.

Faye stopped to look at the knife in her hand, then at Azama, then back at the knife.

“Oh, right. I forgot I was still holding this,” she laughed, “I guess it’d be pretty easy to misunderstand what I was doing. You walked in right as I had finished, but it seems like what Tharja told me didn’t work. Oh well, there’s always next time!”

‘Should I even ask?’

“The knife, Faye,” he tried his best to keep his tone firm, to try to convince himself that he had some degree of control over the situation, but it wavered, betrayed his terror.

“Sorry, I get a little absentminded this late at night,” Faye made her way over to one of the tables pushed to the edge of the room and put the knife down, “Tharja said that it’ll only work on the night of a new moon, so I stayed up a lot later than I normally would, but it’s a shame it didn’t work out.”

‘Might as well confirm my suspicions…’

“What didn’t work?”

“The ritual to summon this dragon called ‘Fomortiis’. She said that it’s a deity of love in Grado, and I wanted to see if it could give Alm and I its blessing. Kiran hasn’t summoned him yet, but I’m sure he’ll arrive someday and I want to be prepared.”

Vaguely recalling a conversation he overheard Lute having with Hector while on the battlefield, the color drained from Azama’s face.

“Please, don’t ever try to do that again.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not a ‘dragon of love’,” Azama shook his head, trying to figure out how Tharja had struck Faye as a trustworthy individual, “I… don’t have all the details, but from what I’ve heard from Heroes who hail from Magvel, it’s an entity comparable to the dragon ‘Duma’ from Valentia, but far more dangerous.”

Faye frowned.

“Oh, that’s kind of… different from what I was expecting.”

“I don’t know why Tharja wanted to bring that demon into our world, but you should probably report this to Alfonse,” Azama said, and then thinking about it more, “You should bring along Eirika or Ephiram as well, since they’d be able to explain what Fomortiis is far better than I could.”

“I guess it turned out for the best that I made some substitutions in the ritual then. Blood tends to be really messy when you have to clean it up, so I just used red paint, and the forest creeps me out at night so I just used the library since it tends to have a lot of space and privacy.”

“And less bears,” Azama muttered, grimacing at the thought of seeing that beast again and trying hard to ignore the implication that Faye has worked with large quantities of blood before.

“Hm?”

“Yeah, that’d probably cause the ritual to fail,” Azama turned towards the door, “I’ll be taking my leave, then.”

“Actually, before you go,” Faye grabbed Azama’s arm before he could grasp the doorknob, halting his retreat, “Kiran has paired you up with Celica in that ‘support’ thing that owl keeps talking about, right?

"Why do you ask?” Azama frowned while faking a cordial tone, not liking the direction this conversation was heading.

“Well, I was wondering if you could, like, dissuade her from pursuing Alm, or, uh, keep her occupied since you’re already so close to-”

“No,” Azama’s frown turned to a scowl, his tone conveying his staunch opposition to whatever Faye was about to suggest, “Absolutely not. I refuse to participate in someone else’s love triangle, let alone one amongst children-” Azama wrested his arm from her grasp and picked up the candlestick from where it had clattered to the floor, “-and I am most certainly not thrilled that you’d think to suggest that my relationship with someone half my age could ever be anything but entirely professional.”

"Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Azama grumbled, leaving the library and immediately heading towards the new wing of the castle. After such an unpleasant encounter, he resolved to make no more detours. His heart could only take so much stress in one day, and if he died before he could meditate at least once in this godforsaken castle, Azama would be incredibly disappointed in the machinations of fate.

---

Standing at the entryway to the new wing of the castle, Azama wondered how could have missed this massive building. Sure, it wasn’t as large as the main castle, but it looked to the be about the size of the residential wing, which was by no means small. He doubted that they could even begin and come so close to completing a building of this size in the time since he had mentioned it to Anna, but having wasted enough time already he pushed the questions that brought about to the back of his head and crossed the threshold.

As Azama walked around the new wing to find a suitable place to meditate, he was genuinely impressed that they had somehow managed to make the ‘new’ building look as worn as the rest of the castle.

‘Do they go out of their way to use older stones? I can’t imagine that it would be that much cheaper… or is this rundown appearance by design? Is it so it doesn’t stand out against the older parts of the castle?’

The corridors lacked the decorations that the old building had, and all the doorways he passed by lacked doors, revealing each room to be just as unfurnished. Taking note of the ones that seemed out of the way enough to avoid being found by anyone else tormented enough to be walking around this late at night, Azama continued his journey through the empty building.

‘It’s a shame that this’ll building will be filled to the brim with Heroes in a few weeks’ time. With how quiet this building is, I’m surprised that it’s connected to the main castle.’

After having spent a good 20 minutes or so exploring it, it occurred to Azama that the new wing was meant to mirror the layout of the other residential wing. Upon that realization, Azama knew exactly where to look next and made his way to where it would be in this building. On the side of Hector’s room opposite his own there was a small corridor that, after extending the length of Hector’s room, turned away from it and extended a few meters before coming to an abrupt halt. If it weren’t so close to Hector’s room in the old residential wing it would have been a wonderful place to meditate, but unfortunately there hadn’t been any other place like it in the castle.

Azama reached the area where the corridor in question would be and was relieved to find it to indeed be there. He sat down at the end of the corridor, out of sight of the main hallway, and set the candle he was holding down. He’d’ve liked to extinguish it outright to decrease the chances of being found -and interrupted-, but since he had no means of relighting it for the journey back to his room, Azama had no choice but to curse his lack of foresight, leave it lit, and hope its dim flicker wouldn’t be seen by whoever else would be roaming the halls of this empty building in the middle of the night.

Azama took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, and let his body relax as he exhaled.

The stones of the floor were hard and unyielding, and his clothing offered little cushioning. It wasn’t comfortable, but Azama knew that he would be able tune it out fully once he began to focus on meditating.

Azama took another slow deep breath, the feeling of the floor already beginning to disappear, and closed his eyes.

Azama leaned back, allowing his body to meet the wall behind him. Just as stiff as the floor beneath him, he rested his head against the wall, his hair providing a little more padding than his clothes did.

Azama took yet another deep breath.

The candle next to him continued to burn, the faint scent of smoke reaching his nose.

Another deep breath let Azama ignore that, too.

It was nearly silent. There was no wind outside, and the candle didn’t crackle like a large fire would have. The loudest thing in this small corner of the castle was Azama himself; his breathing and his heart rate were both steady, and in the isolation from the rest of the world, they were nearly deafening.

With another deep breath, Azama tuned out the sounds of his own body.

Each breath automatically came and went, and with time, the only things Azama was aware of were his own thoughts.

A small smile crept across his lips -not that he noticed- as, at long last, Azama was able to meditate.

 

---

 

Chapter End Notes

This chapter basically served just to get Azama from point A to point B and to introduce some concepts that I might expand upon later (keep reading to find out which!), such as Feh being an actual character and more than just a feathery, less intrusive Omochao. I feel a little bad for writing Faye like this but Heroes really made no attempt to convey the (small) character growth she experienced through her support with Silque and for better or for worse that happened to fit my needs.

As a side note, I think Faye’s ‘80s slasher film heroine’-tier understanding of anything to do with the occult would be outright stated in canon if Echoes placed more emphasis on how Duma’s pacts worked. It’s a flavor I feel complements the rest of her character, but I don’t think I’ll ever end up doing anything else with it.