Sitting alone in his small corner of the deserted wing, lost in his own thoughts, Azama was finally content. He had spent the past few months struggling in vain to meditate, and having finally found both the time and the place to do so, Azama was overcome with a deep sense of fulfillment which would only deepen once he completed sorting through his thoughts.

He ran through a quick list of the things he’d like to contemplate, picked the most long running issue, and pushed the rest from his mind.

‘Now, to start with, let’s address this so-called ‘skill inheritance’ magic.’

While it wasn’t something that he ever really forgot about, Wrys’ comment earlier had brought this to the forefront of his mind. Guilt, guilt, guilt. When it came down to it, that’s all that skill inheritance brought about. Sure, there were quantifiable physical benefits, but when weighed against the lives of others, were those benefits truly worth it?

The ritual itself was relatively simple. The two Heroes involved and a summoner -in their case, Kiran- would head to the altar, the summoner would perform a quick rite, and one of the Heroes would disappear, granting a part of their abilities to the one who remained.

Azama could understand why magic would be required to transfer the skills of one person to another and, quite frankly, considered it to be some of the most impressive -and practical- magic he was aware of. If a grandmaster were to be upon their deathbed, you could transfer some of their immeasurable skill to someone else, to someone younger, and build and build upon it over the course of several generations to create someone of immeasurable strength.

The issue, of course, was that the price paid for that degree of power was the life of another, living human being.

But were they really human?

Azama pushed that intrusive thought from his head. He’d deal with that question when it was time to.

Skill inheritance, when it came down to it, was a sacrificial ritual. You killed someone to take their strength. You could take the stance that they were being ‘sent somewhere else, never to be seen again’, but when it came down to it, how much different from death would that be? You could even argue that since it’s -allegedly- painless it’s ‘humane’, but if that’s the case then wouldn’t murdering someone in their sleep be deemed okay? Wouldn’t-

Azama took a step back. He was getting worked up, and that’s not why he was doing this. He allowed himself to calm down, then resumed his train of thought.

In Azama’s experience, the sacrificial Heroes seemed to be at peace with, or at the very least consenting to the skill inheritance process, and he couldn’t understand why.

Wrys was sacrificed to give him, according to that owl, ‘Live to Serve’. It seemed to be a decently useful skill, allowing him to heal himself as he healed others, and he could understand why it was given to him, his team’s designated meat shield, in particular and yet the recently re-summoned Wrys seemed to be perfectly alright having previously been killed to give it to him.

Perhaps he felt he, as the oldest person present in the castle, had been not long for this world, and his strength was better off being used by someone else. He had mentioned that he had started an orphanage in Archanea, so Azama didn’t think it was out of character for Wrys to be selfless, but would that really manifest as allowing himself to be sacrificed?

Even if he did, Azama really couldn’t justify being an accessory to some sort of suicidal desire.

Moving on to Lukas, who gave him ‘Fortress Defense’. Lukas was, in his own way, one of the most enigmatic members of their company, and not just due to Azama’s limited interaction with the soldier. At first glance, there was nothing about Lukas that really stood out. He was a polite lancer from Valentia with decent defenses, and most people seemed to content with that being how they saw him. And yet, Azama couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something more to him, something worth being cautious of.

Lukas’s personality was too modest to be true. He seemed like he shared Azama’s inclination towards asceticism -though to a notably lesser degree- but having lived that lifestyle for years, everything about Lukas’s disposition seemed deliberately manufactured. Azama couldn’t get a good read on him, and it seemed that was entirely by design. The only thing that Azama could be sure about when it came to Lukas was that he was hiding something and was willing to do quite a bit to make sure nobody picked up on it. Lukas didn’t seem to be malicious, but could Azama trust that observation? How much of Lukas’s kind demeanor was produced for the sole purpose of getting others to let their guard down? Was being sacrificed to Azama part of some sinister plan? Or was furthering the goals of the Order of Heroes and, more specifically, the goals of Kiran simply a cause he was willing to die for? There were too many questions surrounding Lukas and not enough answers, which is, of course, the exact reason why he didn’t know how to feel when Feh told him that the ‘Steady Stance’ from Zelgius would be replacing ‘Fortress Defense’ and making Lukas’s sacrifice entirely pointless.

Strictly speaking, ‘Steady Stance’ wasn’t from Zelgius; it was from The Black Knight. Nobody had seen The Black Knight without his armor on, so there remained that tiny shadow of a doubt that they weren’t the same person, but despite how much Zelgius seemed to insist otherwise, he and The Black Knight were for all intents and purposes indubitably one and the same. Azama couldn’t understand why he continued to insist they weren’t, but if he had to hazard a guess, it may have been due to some sort of grievous transgression he had committed prior to being summoned. While he wasn’t up to snuff on Tellius’ history, it was evident to Azama that he had a complex involvement with a number of major events in contemporary Tellius, and had actively supported more than one side in the conflict that had enveloped the continent as a double agent.

When the Black Knight appeared out of the tempest, a wave of uneasiness moved through most -but not all- of Tellius’ Heroes. If it weren’t for Sharena physically holding him back, Ike would have beheaded the Black Knight on the spot, and yet Micaiah seemed to be relieved to see a familiar face. From bits and pieces of conversations he overheard throughout the castle, Azama knew that Micaiah and Ike, while not necessarily enemies, had opposed each other during Tellius’ Grand War, and the contrast between their reactions to the Black Knight’s appearance cast some light on what kind of relationship the two of them had.

Micaiah seemed to be an interesting case as far as Heroes came, as she was summoned during Tellius’ Great War, while all the other Heroes from Tellius aside from Soothe, Sanaki, Zelgius, and the Black Knight seemed to have been summoned from shortly after the conclusion of the Mad King’s Conquest. She didn’t particularly like Ike, and seemed to expect the feeling to be reciprocated, but to her frustration, the Ike present at the castle had yet to meet her in ‘his’ timeline. She-

Azama paused. He was, once again, getting sidetracked. Having fallen out of practice with meditation, he was getting distracted far more than he normally would. He could pursue that line of thought once he finished his current one, but ultimately Micaiah and Ike’s relationship wasn’t of much concern to him. Taking one thing at a time would yield better results than trying to handle everything all at once.

‘The Black Knight. Right. Him.’

The Black Knight had clearly been allied with Micaiah and existed in opposition to Ike. Azama couldn’t say for sure, but based off of how Ike was screaming things about how he must avenge his father while being restrained by Sharena and how Mist was visibly shaken by his presence in the castle, he suspected that the Black Knight had personally slain Ike’s father. Ike stopped trying kill him after learning that while the Black Knight had not been summoned through Breidablik normal summoning system, he was still under the same kind of contract that the rest of the Heroes were, which forbid Heroes from being able to land a fatal blow on allied Heroes, but he remained in a sour mood until Zelgius was summoned a few months later.

When Zelgius appeared, clad in the same pitch black armor the Black Knight had been, Ike and Micaiah both wordlessly expressed a profound sense of betrayal. Micaiah shut herself in her room, refusing to come out for weeks, and Ike focused his anger on training in solitude. Zelgius himself tried to integrate into the everyday life at the castle as best he could, but the army seemed to regard him with a sense of distrust, and Zelgius clearly picked up on it. In contrast to the Black Knight’s aggressive demeanor, Zelgius seemed to be an excellent knight, a paragon of chivalrous ideals, but it was evident to the entire army that he had at the very least killed someone in cold blood and likely been an active contributor to the destabilization of an entire continent, and that wasn’t something people were so readily willing to overlook.

Being the knight that he was, Zelgius took the wary glances and hushed voices whenever he entered the room without complaint, but it seemed to weigh upon him more than he let on. Some Heroes questioned if he truly qualified as a Hero; even the likes of Arvis and Zephiel had people who rallied behind their exploits, but Zelgius would have stood alone should he have succeeded in whatever he had been trying to accomplish, a hero to nobody but himself.

Azama doubted that Zelgius thought so highly of himself.

While he kept his tongue sharp, Azama still tried to give people a chance, and it was clear to him that Zelgius was making an honest attempt at redeeming himself. He spent most of his spare time performing labor around the castle and doing his best to assist people when he could, and learning how to treat wounds was likely an effort to make himself that much more useful. Azama knew that as a foreigner it was not his place to excuse what Zelgius had done, but he was expressing remorse for his actions and it disheartened him to see the other Heroes from outside of Tellius completely ignore Zelgius’ attempts at reforming. Zelgius probably couldn’t redeem himself within his own lifetime, but the fact that he was trying to regardless said quite a bit more about Zelgius than the knowledge that he was the Black Knight did.

‘That’s the thing about repenting, I suppose,’ Azama thought, wistfully, ‘You can decide to do it, but you don’t get to decide when -or if- you’ll be forgiven.’

And yet, despite all that, he and the Black Knight still kept up the act that they were separate people. The Black Knight, while not openly antagonistic, remained stoic in the castle and hellishly brutal on the battlefield, which stood in stark contrast to Zelgius’ knightly demeanor. At first glance, Azama thought they may have been summoned from separate time periods, like Ike and Micaiah were, and that the Black Knight simply had yet to reach the event in his life that made him regret his actions, but his final words before being sacrificed cast doubt upon that explanation.

A few months back, Azama had been called to the altar used for skill inheritance by Feh and was greeted by Kiran and the Black Knight. Having already been the on the receiving end of the skill inheritance process before and knowing there was not much he could do to stop it, Azama was ready to have it be over with as soon as it could be, but as if sensing his desire to make it quick, the Black Knight had interrupted Kiran shortly after the ritual began.

“Kiran, I’d like a moment with Azama before you continue.”

“Hm?” Kiran had looked up from the book containing the instructions to the rite, “Sure, go ahead.”

A moment passed, before the Black Knight spoke up again.

“Alone, if you will.”

“Ah, of course, I’ll be over here,” Kiran started towards a corner of the room, “Call for me when you’re done.”

“Will do.”

The Black Knight waited for Kiran to be out of earshot, then turned back to Azama.

“What’s this about?” Azama spoke up before the Black Knight had a chance to, a little irate that this unpleasant ordeal would be dragged out longer than it needed to be.

“I wanted to explain to why we’re doing this.”

“I’ve done skill inheritance before, it’s so-”

“No,” the Black Knight shook his helmet-covered head, “I meant why I told Kiran to do this.”

“Come again?” Azama wasn’t sure he had heard that right.

“I told Kiran to have you inherit my Steady Stance.”

“Why?!” Azama shook his head in disbelief, “Why would you ever-”

“I’ll explain if you give me a chance to speak.”

“…Go ahead.”

“Tactically, it’s a better fit for you than Fortress Defense. It only activates when your opponent initiates the battle, but it doesn’t decrease your ability to deal damage with Pain. From what I’ve heard, your Pain has been refined to prevent enemies from counter attacking, so it’ll activate in any situation where you would be attacked.”

“That’s hardly reason enough to-”

“I’m not done, and this’ll be over quicker if you let me finish,” the Black Knight sighed.

Azama kept silent, allowing the Black Knight to resume his explanation.

“As I’m sure you’ve noticed, my presence has a significant negative impact on troop morale,” the Black Knight’s voice shifted from the assertive tone he’d always used to a more wistful, reflective voice that was in line with what Azama would have expected from Zelgius had he known him at the time, “In the past I’ve… done many things I shouldn’t have, and it’s to be expected that people don’t exactly trust me, but as I’m under contract I am unable to leave of my own will.”

The Black Knight took a moment to pause and allow Azama to absorb what he was trying to say.

“My options were either to be sent home, or to convince our commanders that my abilities were better used by somebody else. Sending me home would have been a waste from anyone’s point of view, so passing a skill off to someone else was my only option. I spoke to Kiran, explained my reasoning, and now here we are.”

“But you’re a tremendously powerful solider, why would Kiran ever agree to giving you up?”

The Black Knight shifted in his armor for a moment, before looking in the general direction of Kiran.

“I can’t speak on the behalf of someone else,” as if for dramatic effect, the Black Knight took a deep breath, “but I think you may be better off finding the answer to that yourself.”

Not giving Azama had a chance to reply, the Black Knight signaled for Kiran to head over, attempting to end the conversation at that.

Azama was having none of it, and got a few words out before their summoner returned to the altar.

“All you’re doing is running away.”

“Maybe so,” The Black Knight turned to Kiran, who now stood in position to begin the ritual, “Can we begin?”

“I’m ready.”

“Sure,” Azama grumbled, conceding that despite how he wasn’t done with this discussion, he wouldn’t get anything else out of it if he forced it to continue.

Kiran began the ritual, and it was completed without any difficulties.

“Don’t you worry, you foolish monk,” The Black Knight squeezed out a final remark as his body dissolved into a light which would soon move to envelop Azama, “I’m not the kind of person to leave things unfinished.”

Kiran looked at where the Black Knight once stood, then back towards Azama.

“What was that about?”

Azama sighed as the concept of the Black Knight’s Steady Stance flowed into him and integrated itself into his very being, “I wish I knew.”

Azama and Kiran didn’t have to wait long for their answer, as when Zelgius was summoned a few days later, to the chagrin of Ike and Micaiah, he immediately set off on the path of redemption.

While Wrys’ and Lukas’ sacrifice were the decision of Kiran and could be viewed as them simply not objecting to his order, Zelgius had actively sought out to be released from his contract and took it upon himself to burden Azama with the decision to intervene from a position where he really had no power to. While Azama, as a hard fatalist, would have likely taken the path of least resistance like Wrys and Lukas had, it left a bad taste in his mouth when he saw other people just sit and accept whatever happened to them, and it left an especially bad taste in his mouth when people try to make him complicit in their apathy.

Accepting whatever happened to him as the machinations of ‘fate’ was almost second nature to Azama. There were a few situations, such as with the bear earlier that day, where he would struggle in a bid to survive, but when it came to mundane, everyday inconveniences he’d take them in stride and move on. Stressing over minor things simply wasn’t worth the effort it took, and if he pushed his grievances to the back of his mind he could use it as material to meditate over later.

The struggle against fate, Azama felt, was one the most beautiful things -and quite frankly the only praiseworthy thing- people did. Despite many things seemingly being ‘meant to be’, humans nonetheless refused to accept the hand they were dealt and did their best to reverse the effects of the impatient, incessant march of time.

What struck him so fundamentally wrong about Zelgius’s approach to his atonement was that he seemed to hold his own life in such low regard that he’d be willing to end it for the sake of those who vehemently hated him. It sat in opposition to what he had come to expect from others that he couldn’t help but feel that such an outlook was inalienably wrong.

Could he really, in good faith, have allowed Zelgius to trap him into being an accessory in his disappearance?

Should he have said no to it solely on the basis that ‘death should be avoided’?

Zelgius seemed to be less moody and more helpful having now been resummoned without a helmet, but did that really make it acceptable for him to have used Azama as a means of martyring himself?

Azama paused, giving himself time to rest and process all of that.

Zelgius was a deeply troubled man, that much was certain, but aside from that conversation on the skill inheritance altar he had given no indication that he was suicidal, and Azama was inclined to believe that -aside from whatever lead to him doing whatever it was he had done in Tellius- Zelgius was as normal a skilled swordsman could be. Azama still had mixed feelings about Zelgius’ choices, but he figured he’d finish up contemplating the individual victims of his before trying to look at the bigger picture.

Rounding off the people who gave their life to give him power was Camilla, the Nohrian princess who sat directly opposed to Hinoka as the eldest sister of the royal family of their respective countries. As she wore her heart on her sleeve, there wasn’t really much for Azama to pick apart when it came to her motivations, but the question of why she allowed herself to be used in skill inheritance still remained. As far as Azama was aware Camilla had no real reason to just accept it as it was and given how she has never made any attempt to hide her motivations, he suspected she had no ulterior motive towards wanting to pass down ‘Savage Blow’.

Camilla’s relative indifference to skill inheritance reminded Azama of the underlying issue he had with it; he, at the very least, saw it as a form of death. Perhaps the reason why she, Wrys, and Lukas ‘accepted’ it so easily despite not being contractually obligated to partake in skill inheritance was not because they were indifferent to their own death, but rather because they didn’t see it as death in the first place. To them, it may have just been something like being put on leave, which while not exactly ideal for a professional solider, it wouldn’t be as objectionable as being asked to die for the sake of strengthening a comrade.

In the same line of thinking, it’s possible that Zelgius didn’t seek to redeem himself though death, but rather used it as a means of changing his form to kickstart his repentance. Confessing that he had betrayed most everyone he knew that was present in the Order of Heroes couldn’t have been easy; Ike probably wouldn’t allow himself to be approached by the Black Knight, and Sothe, in his idolization of Ike, was less than subtle about his distrust of the Black Knight, making it hard to approach Micaiah. If he couldn’t find the opportunity to tell them the truth, wouldn’t it be just as effective to force them to see the truth in a way they couldn’t deny?

Is it possible that he allowed himself to be summoned wearing the same armor for that exact reason?

Azama paused his musings, noting he was getting off track again. Zelgius’ motivations would be impossible to guess without more information, so he’d put a stop to that line of thought and go back to looking at the issue as a whole.

Skill inheritance was tough for Azama to have a solid stance on. While he had yet to encounter someone who was directly opposed to it like he was, it still wasn’t something he could agree with.

But could he reject it?

No. Of course not. Ignoring the improbability of him receiving another skill anytime soon, Azama was never in control of anything that happened here.

Azama let out a deep sigh.

He wasn’t doing this to get depressed, but it did remain painfully obvious that things moved so fast here that he had a hard time keeping a grip on the few things he did have a degree of control over. This castle was -in its own special way- just as hellish as the battlefield, and its unfamiliarity when compared to what he was used to in Hoshido made it so had to remain vigilant far more than he ever needed to before.

He’d just have to learn how to get used to that, Azama mused with a bitter laugh before moving on to the next topic.

The nature of the Heroes themselves. That is: were they truly human?

This topic had a lot of things to pick apart, so he’d start with the most apparent one; Hero duplicates.

Wrys, Lukas and Camilla -amongst many others- had been ‘resummoned’ after they had disappeared because of the skill inheritance ritual. That wasn’t particularly unusual; if someone was no longer present in this world, what would stop them from being summoned again? In fact, Corrin’s extraordinary extradimensional estate was outfitted with a similar summoning system, and there was nothing stopping multiple Einherjar from being around there.

The main difference between the Einherjar system and the summoning system at the Order of Heroes is that, while Einherjar were more akin to soulless puppets that took the form and abilities of a known entity, summoned Heroes were effectively indistinguishable from the real deal.

This would be all fine and dandy, except for the fact that multiple instances of a given Hero could be summoned and exist at the same time. From what he had gathered something similar had happened in Ylisse with Lucina, but Azama couldn’t shake the feeling that her situation was distinctly different from whatever allowed summoning to exist. By creating a future different from the one she had come from, Lucina also caused the ‘Lucina’ that would grow up in the new future to in turn be distinctly different from her ‘original’ self.

The Heroes summoned here, on the other hand, seemed to be effectively identical to each other; with a few exceptions, they were pulled from the same point in their lives, with the same set of memories and the same abilities.

Those few exceptions were the Heroes who had multiple ‘types’ of ‘instances’, for lack of an eloquent way to word it. Lyn, for example, was first summoned with a sword as an infantry unit, but later as a cavalry archer, and then as a staff user like himself. Each was clearly pulled from a different point in their life, and yet they didn’t seem to be different individuals. When it came down to it, they were just holding a different weapon and wearing a different outfit.

What’s more is that these duplicates, regardless of ‘type’, seemed to be completely unaware of each other’s existence, while still noticing the duplicates of other Heroes. Was there some sort of blind spot that prevented them from noticing each other enforced by the summoning system?

Azama was sure that he had duplicates of his own, as from what he had gathered they were required for the merging ritual.

Merging was… different from skill inheritance.

On the most obvious level, instead of using two different people, it used two ‘instances’ of the same person. It also, from what he had gathered, simply took two duplicates of one person and made them into one instance that was a smidgeon stronger instead of transferring weapons or abilities. Because it used the same person twice, it didn’t have the same moral dilemma where -from certain perspectives, Azama reminded himself- you are effective killing someone else.

While he had somehow managed to sort through it a few months back, Azama decided to go over the question that merging begged once again.

Merging took two entities and made them into one, but assuming that they could be considered to be ‘separate’ in the first place, which one remained?

The answer, of course, was that it was a mix of the two.

Azama had been merged nine times so far, so he was more familiar with the process than most of the Heroes present. Raigh might have been merged more, but as he didn’t have many chances to interact with the young shaman, Azama wasn’t couldn’t be sure.

A Hero would get called to the same altar that was used for skill inheritance, and stand in the same place, and look towards where the second participant would normally stand. The moment their attention wandered, whatever magical ‘blind spot’ that prevented Heroes from perceiving any of their own duplicate iterations was lifted and revealed that on the opposite side of the room stood another iteration of the Hero.

The sudden realization that someone else was there was a little surprising, but not to the point where it could really be called ‘shocking’. Azama imagined it was comparable to what Katarina might feel if she looked up from the book she was currently absorbed in to see someone else had sat down at the other end of the table she commandeered in the library, or what Setsuna probably felt when anybody tried to get her attention, and the surprise was further dulled by it almost being as if you were looking in a mirror. Perhaps it would be more shocking for people with outfits that were asymmetrical, but for Azama it had about the emotional impact of someone calling his name from several paces behind him.

The ritual would continue, with Kiran performing a quick chant. Azama would then be asked to reach out and both would comply, their movements almost perfectly in sync. The moment his hand collided with the other’s, cracks in the air itself began to spread out from the point of contact, furthering the illusion that there was indeed a mirror in front of him. The cracks rapidly propagated, spreading out in a plane that filled his view until they reached the walls of the room.

The cracks held for a moment, only to fall to pieces, taking the image of his doppelganger with it. The only indication that there hadn’t been a mirror in front of him was the lingering feeling of flesh against flesh where their hands had touched, but that sensation was quickly replaced by a flood of memories that were not his own.

Like with skill inheritance, there was an instance that served as the ‘base’. The base instance was the one whose training and minor quirks were retained, but the resulting instance was able to learn any skills either had access to prior to being merged. With time the memories of the second instance faded, and while their knowledge remained, the sensation that his body was not his own numbed until the only sign that there had been more than one being inhabiting it was that his combat performance had increased ever so slightly.

Where one started and where one ended couldn’t be clearly defined, but Azama as he was right now currently housed parts of nine instances of himself. From an outsider’s perspective, it may seem like the ‘base’ Azama remained entirely intact and the few things gained from the ‘merged’ Azamas were tacked on like a post script to a letter, but merging was nowhere near as sloppy of a process as that.

The Azama sitting in this corner of the castle was a complete entity. His consciousness was an effectively continuous aspect of who he was, and anything ‘carried over’ from a merged Azama fit neatly into it. If a merged Azama had read a certain book prior to being merged, the resulting Azama was able to recall the knowledge gained from that book without any additional effort. Sure, he could identify that the knowledge came from that merged Azama, but since that Azama was part of the current Azama, it didn’t feel any more out of place than being able to recognize that certain memories came from certain life events.

‘Might that be why different types of iterations of a Hero can’t be merged…? Masked Marth and Lucina were born as the same person, but perhaps the consciousness of Lucina would not overlap with that of Masked Marth as well as it would need to for merging to be feasible because she had a few years of added life experience when compared to her younger counterpart.’

Azama paused for a moment to rest before bringing his thoughts back together again.

Merging, as a process, seemed to be an advanced form of alchemy, as did skill inheritance. There were things lost in the process, so it wasn’t exactly ‘perfect’ alchemy, but the idea of mixing around the parts of a living human was leagues ahead of any alchemy he had borne witness to.

When talking about living beings created through alchemy, the term homunculus comes to mind.

In the most literal sense, homunculi are artificial humans. Unlike the Stoneborn and Faceless produced through Nohrian magic, the intent behind their creation was to more often than not serve as a demonstration of an alchemist’s skill, though they aren’t exclusively noncombatants.

While he wasn’t keen on the details of it, it seemed that there had been a skilled mage in Elibe that created homunculi that he called ‘morphs’. These morphs were, from what he gathered from when they had been briefly mentioned by Ursula and Lyn, beings that lacked the ability to feel genuine emotion or the ability to defy their creators but were still able to pass as a ‘true’ human. Perhaps that mage had created them specifically with those limitations so they would be easier to control, but their apparent lack of free will was what clearly set them apart from the Heroes summoned by Breidablik.

While Heroes were bound by a contract that forced them to fight in the stead of their summoner -whether it be Veronica, Surtr, or Kiran- they retained nearly all of their autonomy outside of that obligation. As part of the ‘fight for their summoner’ clause Heroes were not permitted to fight each other to the death, much to the ire of anybody who had known Zelgius. Sparring was still allowed, but it didn’t seem to serve much purpose for honing one’s skills within Askr. Actual combat experience was-

‘I’m getting off track. Let’s focus on Breidablik for now.’

Anna, Alfonse, and Sharena didn’t seem to have a firm grasp on how Breidablik’s standard summoning ritual worked aside from ‘orbs go in, Heroes come out’, and if Kiran knew any more, they hadn’t given any indication. Summoning, as a process, seemed to require a catalyst of some form. This more often than not took the form of orbs, but certain artifacts could be used to summon a specific Hero without the need to spend orbs. These artifacts most commonly come from the instabilities caused by ‘Tempest Trials’ and ‘Grand Hero Battles’, but they sometimes came as rewards for completing requests from Askrian citizens that Feh conveyed to the Order of Heroes.

From what he could tell, Surtr and Veronica were restricted to the artifact-based summoning as they did not have access to Breidablik’s ability to use orbs as catalysts. Their contracts with any Heroes they had summoned also seemed to expire upon defeat, which wasn’t the case with Breidablik-based summons. As far as anyone could tell, Breidablik-based Heroes could only be freed from their contract by their summoner, regardless of what might happen. Death itself was of no consequence, as it could even restore Heroes to full health upon the conclusion of a battle, making it a fearsome weapon indeed.

At its core, Breidablik seemed to be a tool that just facilitated the summoning of Heroes and made alterations to the contracts formed with them. The fact that Breidablik was used to ‘summon’ and not ‘create’ Heroes seemed to imply that the Heroes are ‘brought’ from another location to Askr. This would further imply that the Heroes were ‘pulled’ directly from their world of origin.

However…

If Heroes were taken out of the world they belonged in, wouldn’t other worlds have become aware of Askr? Heroes by their very nature were people who would be missed, so any sudden disappearances surely would have been noticed, yet none of the Heroes seemed to have been aware of what summoning was prior to their arrival in Askr.

Perhaps they were returned to their world moments later?

But that wouldn’t account for their experiences in the meantime. Prior to coming to Askr, Azama had heard whispers of a type of magic that prevented certain information from being from being shared, but even that wouldn’t negate any physical training they underwent while in Askr.

How could they hide the fact that time had passed for Heroes while they had been summoned?

Bringing this back to homunculi, it seemed like the most reasonable explanation for how summoning worked without being detectable from outside of Askr was that it would ‘create’ instead of ‘summon’. After all, if ‘summoning’ created a duplicate of that person’s body and of their soul using their ‘original’ as a blueprint, it wouldn’t disrupt the original in any noticeable way. If this was the case, perhaps the artifact catalysts served as blueprints in and of themselves.

This would mean that Heroes were artificial humans.

If Heroes were artificial humans, it would make sense that skill inheritance and merging were so seamless, and that combat manuals as a concept could even exist. Regardless of the type of magic it used, if summoning created every aspect of a Hero, the fundamentals for understanding how to mix and match parts of Heroes would simply be the next step in developing it.

While they were a relatively new development and he hadn’t had much time to familiarize himself with it, creating combat manuals seemed to be the same process as sending home a Hero, but it preserved the information needed to perform merging and skill inheritance. The idea that it was trapping the soul itself seemed impractical at best and needlessly morbid at worst, but if it simply ‘transcribed’ whatever instructions were needed for Breidablik to accurately perform inheritance and merging it might be comparable to how catalysts contained the instructions to summon a specific Hero.

Along the same lines, ‘Unlock Potential’ -or Promotion, as Kiran called it- was a ritual that increased the ‘rarity’ of a Hero and could be seen as a way to patch up the flaws left behind in an imperfect homunculus. A few months back Katarina had uncovered a book hidden deep in the library which covered the summoning system, and -while it didn’t explain what summoning actually did- Kiran and Feh were able to use the information within to increase the rate at which ‘four star’ Heroes were summoned and decrease the rate at which ‘three star’ Heroes were summoned. If you didn’t factor in merging, Heroes with a higher rarity were objectively stronger than their lower rarity counterparts; combining that with Katarina’s discovery of a more refined summoning ritual that favored higher rarities would suggest that the creation of Heroes was currently an imperfect process that created Heroes with flaws. ‘Five stars’ seemed to be an upper limit on a Hero’s rarity, and the presence of a maximum rarity would suggest that a homunculus could only be improved so much, which would further suggest that ‘five star’ Heroes were homunculi without flaws.

To the endless lament of Kiran, summoning as a process was impartial in the sense that if you didn’t have a catalyst you had no control over which Hero would be summoned or the rarity that they would be at. Certain Heroes -like Azama- were unavailable at ‘five stars’ and needed to be promoted to reach the supposed perfection of ‘five stars’ while there were others that could only be summoned at ‘five stars’. Many of the Heroes that could only be summoned at ‘five stars’ held weapons that could not be inherited by others, so it might be possible that whatever prevented their weapons from being shared would reject an ‘imperfect’ homunculus as well. Based off of that, it wouldn’t be too much of a reach to assume that certain Heroes were more ‘stable’ when created as homunculi at specific rarities, no?

As time passed, Feh was able to make subtle changes to the summoning system. When most Heroes could be initially summoned they were only available at ‘five stars’ but after …whatever it was Feh did, sometimes a Hero -like Soleil- could be summoned at ‘four stars’ or ‘five stars’ within a few weeks. A few months back she was able to move a large amount of Heroes from the ‘four and five star pool’ to the ‘three and four star pool’, which she said was to fix how diluted the ‘five star pool’ had gotten recently. A few of these units had their own unique weapon or skill, so it seemed Feh had refined the summoning system to allow their homunculi to be stable at lower rarities.

Speaking of the summoning system…

While the summoning system itself seemed to predate known history within Askr, someone had to have created it. The intent behind it seemed to be to be able to create an army incapable of desertion while still being capable of functioning independently, and the draw behind being able to create an army was obvious; it kept your citizenry out of harm’s way without diminishing your own military might. Perhaps a conflict similar to the one that currently faced Askr had engulfed the continent during an eon time forgot?

So, this meant that there was a considerable chance that Azama was an artificial human.

Normally people might find that revelation alarming, but even ignoring the fact there was no hard proof he was artificial, Azama didn’t see any point in obsessing over it.

If something looks like a person, acts like a person and thinks like a person, what difference did it make if they were born in a womb or born from some esoteric form of magic? Sure, there were connotations that came with being ‘artificial’, but the vast majority of individuals at the Order of Heroes had been summoned so even if it ended up being that they weren’t ‘real’ humans, Azama couldn’t see anyone relevant to his day-to-day life deciding it made him into less of a person.

His worth as a person was something Azama had sorted through well over a decade ago, long before he had been summoned to Askr and even before Lady Hinoka had hired him, and the possibility of him being artificial didn’t really change much. If it was a sure fact that they were homunculi it might have been something that plagued Azama a bit more, but in the grand scheme of things? This was nothing he hadn’t dealt with before.

Azama took another deep breath, giving himself a moment to pause his thoughts.

It had been a while since he had been this relaxed, and having sorted through most of what was bothering him, he had nearly reached that coveted state of tranquility that had eluded him for so long.

There was just one final thing to unpack, and while there was quite a bit to it -or rather, them-, knowing he was in the final stretch pushed him to continue.

 

---

 

Chapter End Notes

I’d like to think that I did my best at making this more than just Exposition: The Chapter but trying to make something like that flow well or at least be entertaining when it’s literally just someone thinking through things is about as tough as to sounds. Out of all the parts of this fic, I feel that this was where I might have bit off more than I could chew the most, but I can be satisfied with it as a first attempt at that kind of thing.

I’ll hold off on commenting further on this and the next two chapters because I had originally intended for them to all be a single chapter that I split up because even this chapter alone was long enough, and I’d prefer to look at them together.