A/N: This very important point just came to me suddenly, and should technically have happened much earlier in the story. It's technically happening sometime during chapters 15-17 (16-18 by FFN's numbering), while Ed's largely spending his time working on the arrays with the Ishbalan alchemists.

This needed to be done to clarify a point a bit after I'd been reading a story about some blood mages being defeated. For those who don't get it, blood mages torture and kill people, then siphon off their energy as a means of 'becoming more powerful'. This Interlude is about how that fits into FMA by FMA's own noted data.

Interlude: Horrific Realization

Ed was sitting at the kitchen table with Nasima and Halimah as the other alchemists went out to get food, more ink, pens, and paper, and a few other supplies. It was around noon anyway, so they were probably going to bring back a made lunch for the three who had stayed there to finish the copying work.

Suddenly, he just felt like he had to ask their perspective of things, as alchemists who studied both alchemy and alkahestry but only used the latter. "Aunt Nasima, Aunt Halimah, why are Ishbalans so opposed to alchemy, and to Amestrian alchemy in particular? Maybe you can explain it better than just to say it's evil or unnatural?"

The two women traded surprised and apprehensive looks, but then Nasima said, "Jed, I'm not sure you realize the significance of the key coding for the source of energy for Amestrian alchemy. You certainly don't use the same key coding—in fact, yours is very similar to alkahestry's coding, just placed in Amestrian-style arrays."

"What coding is that?" he asked with a frown.

Halimah sighed faintly and pulled over a scrap paper she'd made notes on earlier, then wrote a few runes on it. She then pushed it over to him to read as she said, "These are in every Amestrian array. They're also universal coding for sacrifice and sacrificial energy—the energy of the dead."

The boy was quiet for a minute as he stared at them in confusion for a long moment, wondering when he'd stopped using them—only to realize he'd last used them before being sent to Gaia for the first time. But then he also remembered how he'd learned that the energy Amestrians were pulling on was the energy of the dead—the energy caused by the excessive death toll in all the wars (the other reason besides spilling blood on the land), and from other methods of death. It was also an energy which could be shoved out of the area because it wasn't anchored anywhere or being produced by any stable source like plate tectonics would have been.

"I knew traditional Amestrian alchemy used that energy of death, but why is that something—like why 'sacrifice'? They weren't sacrifices. At least, not for that," he said, brow furrowed as he tried to grasp the actual logic at work.

Again, the women traded looks, then Halimah said, "You told us how the Philosopher's Stone is made and how it works. That's 'death energy' being kept in a very small space and being used up bit by bit as someone chooses to use it. This is the lingering energy of the dead, through any means, being used the same way, but not so easily pulled on—you have to reach further for it. The fact is, that energy should be cleansed, not used, and using it causes a taint in the one using it. You have obviously gained some of that taint, but somehow overcame it."

When he just looked more confused, Nasima said simply, "Jed, we've known for a very long time about 'blood magic'. While there are safe ways to use a few branches of that kind of power, those are either self-sacrifice or using blood from an existing wound—not creating a new wound or killing someone to accomplish a task. Energy gained through the sacrifice of others is intrinsically tainted and that taint stays in its users—it's a kind of addiction, and a very hard one to break because not using it often makes a person feel starved, often for a very extended time."

The woman paused to eye him, even as he stared at her with wide eyes. "The major problem is that Amestrian alchemy draws exclusively from that 'sacrificial' source, and Jed—every Amestrian alchemist is addicted to sacrificial energy as a result. Somehow, you stopped using those arrays and recovered from that taint so only a faint bit is still clinging to you, but most alchemists aren't so lucky. None of them even know they've been forcibly addicted to the energy of traumatic death, let alone anything else that goes on in the military—or other—facilities."

For a long moment, Ed just stared at her as he felt a sudden sinking sensation. The Stone was exactly the same thing, just on a scale smaller (in space, not quantity of energy) and more controlled. It was why his father's energy grated on him so much. It was why he had immediately begun using his new alchemy, and even the 'old arrays' he'd used had been modified in his own mind somehow to pull from planetary energy, not from the energy of death (if that was Minerva's doing, he was suddenly thankful she'd done it). He'd never thought of it as an addiction or as something tainted before, but did that mean it wasn't either of those things?

His mind jumped to Nina's soul in the various dimensions before Minerva had worked out a way to keep it out of Fuhito's hands. The soul he'd been made to send on would have given him so much energy, but it would have just destroyed what had been left of her, and that taint—the energy—if he'd actually tried to use it...He'd have very literally used a sacrifice to do a task. That he'd even thought to go that route had made him ill, but by then, he'd been so used to using planetary energy that it hadn't been a long-lived thought.

Taint. They were all tainted by using Amestrian alchemy as it was. And they were all addicted to the suffering of others. Was that how people like Kimblee had gone so far out of control—they were so damned high on the drug of sacrificial energy that they may as well have been heavy druggies? There were ones like Kimblee who had reveled in it, but Shou Tucker had been just as bad—using his wife and daughter as he had would have been one of those signs. The Mustang Ed had once known hadn't quite been fully sane, either. And that wasn't even getting into how short-lived that energy actually was, and how often more of it was needed, which was another reason so many wars and deaths would have been 'needed' to maintain the nation.

And it had all been very deliberate—the First Homunculus had known he was giving them arrays based on sacrificial blood energy. Why? It didn't technically help him.

Unless...Like the people using it were addicted to the blood energy, maybe he had been planning to make a Stone for himself which was full of already-tainted souls? Maybe that was 'Father's' addiction, was to souls tainted by sacrificial energy. Or maybe he thought that would give his Stone more power, or even that it was his way of justifying destroying everyone, on the 'premise' that they were all evil because they willingly used sacrificial energy. Maybe it was all of them.

"...I feel really sick now," he said quietly. "I had never thought it through in that way before, and both Ishbala and Minerva would never willingly allow people to use an energy source like that. And yet...The being at the Alchemist's Gate doesn't seem to care if we do or not. Somehow, that really, really bothers me."

Nasima reached over to rub his back. "The major point right now is that you've found a different source, and you and your brother now won't ever gain any further taint. You've given us a way to safely use this kind of alchemy as well, and that's no small thing. You can't fix everyone right this moment, but at least now you know the actual root of how our Priests and people called Amestrian alchemy 'evil'. If the rest of the people really don't know that's what they're doing, the one who taught them is to blame, and maybe others can be saved."

"We're told we're pulling on the energy of plate tectonics," the boy sighed, going back to work.

The women traded momentary alarmed looks. "Very deliberate, then," Halimah commented. "Your leader is a very terrible person to lie to people like that. I do hope soon things will play out so your version of it can spread and remove the one currently using sacrificial energy. I think that would go a long way towards fixing a lot of problems in your society."

"Yeah, not the least of which is all the negative repercussions of just maintaining an addiction in the first place, let alone the particulars of that specific addiction," Ed snorted. "And I stupidly never really realized what this meant before now..."

"Most of the world doesn't use that premise, only certain, normally evil, individuals do. Amestris is the only nation where all of its alchemists are using such an energy," Nasima pointed out dryly. "And they aren't doing it willingly if they've been lied to about what those runes mean. You'd have had no way of knowing without being close enough to alchemists of another nation to be able to ask the right question and get a complete and honest answer."

"...Which you've just done," Ed pointed out with a small smile. "Thank you for explaining it, though. It really helped put some things into perspective for me, and showed me something else badly needing to be fixed."

"Don't let it drag you down, though," Halimah warned gently. "You can't do anything right this moment, so do what you can right now and work on that later, when an opportunity presents itself."

"Yeah, thanks," the boy agreed, going back to his copying work.