Intricacy

Ed went right to bed when he and Rashad got home, Al and Winry curled up at his sides. It was left to his 'father' to explain to the other adults what had happened and what the new agreement was, but right then, all Ed wanted to do was sleep, and the man didn't have the heart to tell him otherwise. And morning was no better. He woke late—Al and Winry had already left—and just felt weighed down, so after eating, went right back to bed. The same was true at lunch, which was also late, and through the afternoon, though he was awake enough towards four that he sat in bed and read for a bit before they had their evening meal.

Since Zahir, Nasima, and Al were there for supper, Zahir asked, "Ed, I know Rashad told us about the artifact which determined you're an Avatar of Ishbala, but none of us got a clear picture of what happened in town before that. Could you tell us about what happened with the Amestrians?"

"Yeah, I want to know, too! It was weird, all those lights!" Al agreed. "What were they, anyway?"

Blinking, Ed looked around at all four of the others at the table with him and saw curiosity and interest, so he sighed faintly and nodded. "The Amestrians—one of them wasn't human. She was a being called a homunculus, or a magically-made and sentient being which has various powers. There were seven of them in total—their creator made them in the image of the Seven Sins of the Amestrian religion, in the name of 'removing those sins from himself'—and the one who was here was called Lust. I don't know where the others currently are."

He paused to take a deep breath, then went on, "She was here to deliberately escalate the war, so I had to stop her. A friend of mine had created an array to reduce just about anything to pure, raw, planetary energy—the same energy Ishbala runs on. It works fast and it's painless, so I activated that and aimed for her as the target. Usually, a human, or at least a normal one, only produces a small amount of energy—several dozen of those lights—but a homunculus is essentially only made of solidified energy, and something the size of a human body made of energy isn't a small amount of energy, hence the veritable 'snowfall' of energy lights. They're called pyreflies because they're usually associated with death and returning to the planet."

It was Nasima who commented, "If those lights were planetary energy like Ishbala's, that would explain the plants which have suddenly sprung up along the entire area where those lights fell to the ground. Thankfully, they've stayed small and are mostly grasses, but we've gained some fruit trees and bushes as well. Most of our group have claimed those because we were the first to go and see what the result of the energy had been. Would they have harmed any people who were touched by them?"

"No," Ed answered in amusement, shaking his head. "They're benign energy, so at best, if there was something wrong with your skin, they'd have healed it. Usually, they have no actual reaction, even to ground when they touch it. If this caused growth, this area was already primed to react to inundations of planetary energy—Ishbala's legacy, I suspect."

"That has very real potential," Rashad agreed thoughtfully. "How long do you feel you'll be able to stay up tonight, Ed?"

"A couple hours, I think," the boy answered. "The wall really, really fought me when I made that hole, but it was bigger than the pin-pricks I usually create. I used a lot more energy than normal on that task, and I'd already been using much more than normal in the first place. But, it tells us two very important things—we're going to have to account for it to actively fight back when we try to put the large hole to free Ishbala, and we're going to need a much bigger one than I made just then. A hole about the size of a man's fist isn't enough for Ishbala to do anything with."

"We'd suspected that, for the latter," Zahir agreed with a nod. "But having affirmation is useful. And when you called the types of alchemy and alkahestry a 'conflict of interests', we should have immediately realized it would offer resistance we'd have to counter. Knowing now so we can adjust our arrays is useful. We can easily work on that while you're out at the Temple for your new studies. And I also agree with your assessment that their texts might actually have useful data for us—things like how this land may react to what we're doing if it's been 'primed' to react to planetary energy."

"True," Ed agreed. "I'll discuss some of the things with you if I'm not sure they'd apply, and things I'm sure will apply you'll obviously get so we have all the data."

"What surprises me is that Al doesn't want to participate," Nasima commented in some amusement, gaze on the younger boy.

"I decided I'm going to be a doctor, so I don't need to," Al answered with a cheeky grin. "And almost every time you tell me to go play, I go to the healer's place to help him and learn more." Ed chuckled as the other adults sighed and grinned in wry amusement.

"Maybe we should have Al and Winry go to the Temple to be tested with that artifact, too," Zahir offered suddenly.

"Possibly, but Ed has extenuating circumstances which caused that result, and Al and Winry would likely not get the same result," Rashad commented, and the others—except for Ed—blinked and stared at him. "...Listen, for Ed, I'd honestly be more surprised if he hadn't gotten such a result," the man informed his brother and sister-in-law. "It only shocked me the High Priest pulled out that artifact at all, not what the result was. And I also know for a fact that neither other child has the same circumstance causing the 'Avatar' result. We still might get a very interesting reaction regarding both of them, and I wouldn't be surprised to see such a thing, but for them to become literal Avatars, I don't see it."

"What result do you think you'd get from us?" Al asked curiously.

The Warrior-Priest gave him a wry smile. "Your healing water is essentially the result the artifact would give, but in a much more limited and less potent supply. It would mark you as a Priest-Healer, not either a Healer or a Priest, which would be a very demanding role I don't think you would actually want—either by itself is already highly demanding."

Al nodded his agreement as he said, "Yes, it is. And what do you think Winry would get?"

"Moving parts," Rashad answered, and the others echoed him in confusion, even Ed. As such, he actually chuckled before saying, "There have been a few documented cases of the artifact becoming a series of moving parts like a puzzle, which the holder generally delights in trying to return to order. Those who had such a result generally liked to do exactly what Winry does—make and fix things. They're the ones who have given our society what technological advancement there is here, and who create devices for us which are actually useful in our everyday lives."

"You know, I think your whole society should get tested by that artifact, because it sounds like it's reading their soul for what their nature is," Ed commented suddenly, crossing his arms on the table-top and propping his chin on them. "Not when they're children unless they're emphatic about what they want to do—it will usually agree with them if I'm right—but also because it might actually balance society more by giving you more scientists, mechanics, and engineers, while still letting you have your spiritualism. I mean, since that's essentially Ishbala telling you what your soul wants to do for a living. I don't think he'd offer something you loathed doing, even if you were good at it."

"Why would you think that?" Nasima asked curiously as she tipped her head to the side thoughtfully.

"To which part?" the boy blinked in surprise, Al nodding rapidly beside him.

"That Ishbala wouldn't offer something you didn't like," she answered.

"Because that's what tyrants do, and Ishbala isn't one," Ed answered flatly. "Ideally, you'd do a job you both want to do and are good at, but not everyone likes things they're good at. I'm good at a lot of things—even drawing—but I only really like alchemy. I'm a scientist, through-and-through. Trying to make me anything else without that to fall back on is actually mentally damaging to me." He paused as Al and the adults stared at him in amazement. "And I know for a fact I'm not the only one. Just try making Winry be a typical housewife—you'd destroy her in a few weeks. Ishbala wouldn't want that because he cares, he's benign. I know that from my interactions with him. So no, he's not going to indicate that your soul would want to do something you absolutely don't want to do."

"Is he the one deciding what the artifact indicates, though?" Rashad asked. "Even through the wall?"

Ed's brow rose as he asked, "Rashad, where did that artifact come from?" The man opened his mouth to answer, then shut it hard. "From his own hand before he was sealed, right?" the boy asked, that time with an oddly sardonic smirk. The older man just nodded mutely. "If we assume that's true—and I don't have any reason to think it's not—then it operates exactly how he wanted it to—by indicating what you and your soul want, and reacting to unusual energies in the person which may indicate something either in need of fixing or of encouraging and studying. If you didn't already know most of the results, you'd have to study them to find out what each one was and meant. And maybe you should never have stopped doing that."

"Rashad, I think I'm glad he's your 'son' to deal with on a day-to-day basis—I'm really not sure I'd be able to handle his depth of thought processes," Zahir said to his younger brother in a stunned tone.

In response, Rashad sighed and returned, "And you thought I made the wrong decision when I got attached to him?"

For some reason, the admission caused Ed to start giggling with mirth, which caused the others to stare at him in surprise again until he calmed enough to say through his giggles, "I'd wondered...when Rashad made...the offer...but hearing all...the Priests call me...his son, even...knowing I'm not...by blood...It suddenly makes sense..."

"Big Brother, what does that mean?" Al asked, gaze suddenly wary.

"I'd been thinking a lot that Rashad felt more like a father to me than even my own," the older brother told the younger, whose eyes widened in surprise, but because Ed was grinning, he just waited for him to finish. After a moment to look at a thoughtful Rashad, he told Al (and the others by extension), "He's been really treating me like I'm his son, too. It just felt natural. To me, he's just as much my family as you are, Al. Part of that is from the same thing causing the 'Avatar' result from the artifact, but part of it is just because it's been like that from the start, building since we met, even when he wasn't right there in front of us."

He knew the others were puzzled, as well, but it was Al (who was frowning in confusion) who asked slowly, "But what about Mom and Dad? And all the others we already had as a family—Auntie Sarah and Uncle Yuri, Granny Pinako, Roy, Maes, and Riza?"

Sighing, Ed told his brother quietly, "The situation with Dad is complicated, and it's not actually about his a—horrible idea of ditching us. Even though I'm still not happy with him for that. There's an energy in him which actually physically repels me and makes me not want to be close to him. Yes, I know what it is, and no, I'm not sharing—he'll be in very real danger if I do. Everyone else is no less family just because Rashad is more of a father to me than Dad. Whether it's you, or Mom—or any of the others. And those bonds can't be broken, either, anyway. Especially not the ones with Roy and Riza."

After a long silence, Al finally asked in some surprise, "So, our family is just getting bigger again? That's all?"

"Yeah, that's all," Ed agreed with a smile, and Al grinned.

"Then that's okay!" the younger boy returned, and looked around at the table. "They're a good family. I like it here. I think Mom would, too." The adults all smiled at Al's pronouncement about them being a good family.

"If she'll move, sure," the older boy agreed in amusement. "Who knows if she will, though."

"Might be safer for her if she did if there's really that horrible homunculus thing running Amestris to destroy it, though," Al commented.

Ed sighed. "Being here isn't any safer, Al. We're still inside the zone of effect—that's why the Führer is pushing war with Ishbal. And that's also why Dad and Roy have to keep working, at least until we can free Ishbala and Minerva gets here."

"Ishbala can't correct the issue with the zone of effect himself?" Zahir asked apprehensively as he and Nasima traded worried looks.

"If the entity digging the circle through the ground—another one like Lust, but called Sloth—is in his range when we free him, he might be able to make good headway against it. But I know Sloth is closer to Fort Briggs than to here—and outside Ishbala's immediate range of effect for purification," Ed shrugged. "The one thing about Sloth is that he works very, very slowly and is having to dig through solid bedrock. Even though he 'can do' it, that takes time. He's been working for five hundred years, and in about ten more, the circle will be done, which means very little of it is left. Minerva's arrival, on the other hand, is going to do a massive purge of negative energies across a huge area of the planet—probably most of this continent and part of the one across the southern sea. She'd hit him with that arrival purging where the already planet-bound Ishbala couldn't."

"If that's the case, wouldn't that mean the world isn't in danger anymore?" Nasima blinked in surprise.

The boy snorted and returned, "You're only asking that now?"

"Well, that's what our focus has been on since you arrived," she returned dryly.

"But it's also a local problem, and isn't actually planet-threatening," he answered, sitting straight to meet her gaze evenly. "It will harm people in this area, but not to the point where it would destroy the world. Fixing it will make our lives a lot easier and is still a problem in need of being fixed, but it's not the thing Minerva's needed to fix. We don't really know what that one is yet—we have to figure out how someone managed to obliterate every variant of this world which exists, all at about the same moment. Trying to deal with the homunculi and that at the same time won't go over well, so fixing this gets it out of the way. That's all. And Ishbala is needed to help Minerva, too."

The others blinked at him in surprise, then Zahir sighed. "So how do we fix a problem we don't know the origin of?" There was something in his expression which told Ed he didn't believe the 'total destruction pending' bit.

"Yeah," the boy said, tone flat. "Even the intermediary who wanted our help—mine and Minerva's—couldn't work it out. The existing five planetary entities here—Ishbala and four others—with the intermediary's help couldn't figure it out. They got as far as working out that this was the dimension it originated in, but it happened too suddenly and had no relation to the homunculi. That means it happened too suddenly to be natural, and they would have tracked any other beings with extreme power, which also led nowhere. Honestly, that leaves humans having done something very, very stupid, worse even than doing something which would have led to seeing the Alchemist's Gate. All it would have taken was one stupid human. And a lot more power than this world should have been able to provide."

After a silence, Nasima mused, "If the functional term and requirement was 'power', then couldn't someone have done it just because they wanted the power?"

Zahir looked at her sharply as Ed blinked, but the boy then glared at him as he asked his wife, "Are you saying you believe the world is in danger of being destroyed?"

She sighed and met her husband's gaze to tell him plainly, "Ed has proven time and again that he's no fool and has access to knowledge we don't. He's more than proven himself, and I'm shocked you don't believe him. Especially now that he's marked as an Avatar of Ishbala—such a one lies only rarely, and never about something so serious. Wanting to pretend it's not true isn't an excuse. We've had ample opportunity to see that hiding from things which are wrong on this scale won't fix them."

The man looked put out by her rebuttal, but Rashad decided to add a comment to Nasima's offer of what someone may have wanted. "It would actually be valid to say someone might just have wanted the power, and the only questions would be 'how' and 'why'. Granted, it could just be the power for the power, but that usually leads to something more tangible in the physical world—what they want is power over people, not just power in general. But if they were trying to do something, it could have been good or bad, and may even have been accidental. That is, they may not have meant to cause so much destruction in the name of getting extra power to do what they were trying to do."

"What's most puzzling is how they destroyed every other dimension of this world by doing it," Ed commented, and Nasima and Rashad looked at him curiously. "If I think about it from my side—my knowledge of how Minerva works—the planetary entities have the same core regardless of dimension, but the destruction of the world in one dimension has never affected the other dimensions. Even if they had a 'link' through Minerva's core, they were all completely independent of one another."

Al piped up then, saying, "That would mean someone made links between them where they shouldn't have been."

"Yeah," Ed agreed with a nod at his younger brother. "And if the intermediary and the essences weren't aware of those links, they could only have formed a moment before the destruction of the worlds. And that could only have been done with super-powerful alchemy or super-advanced technology. Both of which no one here knows or could use. Unless someone happened to have an epiphany and didn't think it through properly, we end up with a complete blank in trying to work out what happened. Even Minerva's people couldn't have done this, and they nearly destroyed her before realizing they were and fixing it."

A long, long silence followed, then Zahir sighed faintly and said, "So if Minerva is as powerful as you say, and as interactive as you say, use that to attract people who have a desire or need for 'power', as in, raw energy. At the very least, you'll be able to teach them how dangerous such 'power' can be, and at best, whoever will cause the problem will walk right into your hands. If Ishbala turns out to be equally interactive, he—and we—can help, too. Especially if Rashad is right and Minerva will be our neighbor."

Everyone stared at him in surprise for a long minute, then Ed grinned and said, "Thanks, Uncle Zahir. I'll talk with Minerva and her people about it when they get here."

The man nodded agreement, and their discussions became less intense after that, until Zahir, Nasima, and Al left for their home. It was fairly late by then, and Ed yawned as he got up to go to his room and back to sleep—but startled when he felt Rashad pull him into his lap and wrap his arms around him in a hug.

"I'm a little surprised you were so open in front of them. You were even being careful in front of your brother before now," the man commented to the boy he held.

"Probably not careful enough to keep him from realizing something strange is going on," Ed sighed faintly. "Him taking it with a grain of salt and not asking for clarification tells me he knows more than he's letting on. I'd have to guess a little, but when he calls on healing water, I think he's putting holes in the barrier, too, and is talking with Ishbala."

"Aren't you the only one who can do that because of your not-blood?" Rashad asked in surprise.

"Ishbala interacted with Doctor Marcoh directly when he put a hole in the barrier once, so no, I'm not the only one," the boy told him bluntly. "I think there are two factors. One is the barrier—anyone who gets through it, he'll interact with by default. Until it comes down, that effect will happen because right now he's in a restricted space and pressure alone would cause it.

"But, I think the other factor is the key one here—anyone with blood from the race created by the sentience would be able to interact with it to some degree, assuming they knew they could and how. And I know for a fact my mom's side of the family has Cetra blood—blood from the race Minerva created to tend her world. It's why I could survive there in the first place. And because Minerva and Ishbala are very much the same 'type' of entity, there's a resonance between Cetra and Ishbala—and Ishbala's people. Like you. That also means either Ishbalans all have Cetra blood or the Cetra and the Ishbalans were created in an eerily similar form—either or both are possible. It's how I can take you so easily as family, too. But that similarity and blood link is primarily how and why Al is talking to Ishbala, and having discussions with him."

"Isn't it assuming a lot to say Al's doing that?" the man asked, sounding suddenly amused.

Ed twisted to look up at him and say bluntly, "No. Al isn't stupid—he's as smart as I am, just without the extra millenniums of experience. And frankly, for him to create healing water, he has to be pretty damned powerful, too. It's not an automatic Cetra skill and often takes years for trained Cetra to work up to—the youngest Cetra I know of who could use it before now was sixteen years old. He did it in one winter at four years old. Don't underestimate him, Rashad. You're doing yourself and him a disservice if you do."

The Warrior-Priest blinked down at him in surprise for a minute, then nodded acceptance. "I suppose that goes back to what you said about testing everyone with the artifact Ishbala gave us. If someone has both the natural affinity and the desire to do something, the results are a lot better than if one or the other is missing. He had the desire to do it, and apparently a natural skill for it, so he got those results very early in life."

"Admittedly, he also had me helping him by letting him know it was possible and working out how," Ed grinned. "Aeris might have done it sooner, too, if she'd known she could. And I'm not sure Nina cares, because her healing far exceeds the bounds of normal Cetra healing without factoring in healing water. But I'm really glad Al decided to focus on healing anyway, because that's his path so he's not trying to follow mine."

"And since his nature does seem to be a healer's, him following your path would be very, very hard on him," Rashad agreed. "You won't ever tell him you killed Kimblee, will you? With Lust, you could get away with it because she didn't qualify as 'human', but even if the alchemist was a sorry excuse for one, he was human."

"I don't ever intend to tell anyone but you and Minerva's people I killed him, actually," the boy shrugged. "And definitely not Al—he doesn't need to know what I can do after how long I've been alive, even commit premeditated murder. I don't think his mind could handle thinking of me that way if even just the thought that 'I would let Mom die' almost broke him."

"Would you let her die?" the man asked quietly.

"No, but Al misinterpreted what I meant when I said the dead are meant to stay that way. If she'd already died, I won't try to bring her back to life. I already learned the hard way how devastating that path is, and I won't repeat it. But, I'd still do everything I could to keep her from dying in the first place. Al's a natural healer, so his chances in doing that, for her and others, are way higher than mine. I'm glad that very discussion led him to this path, and I'm only sorry I was stupid enough to screw it for him the first time through."

That made Rashad chuckle, but then he rose with the boy in his arms. "Fair enough. Now, let's get back to child-Ed so I can read you a bed-time story, all right?"

Even though the words made him blush a bit, the boy offered no resistance to the idea, and once again fell asleep to the man reading to him—in Ishbalan, once he'd told the man he's now fluent thanks to the larger hole in the barrier.