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Description
It was a heated argument between Azalea Cloud and Elder Nybran Daggerwind that hammered the final nail in the coffin of the former's career as a Dash-Gyal - an intelligence and peacekeeping agent of the Council of Draconic Inheritors. For too long the alien had trusted her superiors that the time for the lifting of the Masquerade Protocol would soon come. The anti-magic terrorist paramilitary known as HOME had been dismantled and defeated. An uneasy but important truce was brokered with the Jotun Legion. The Seven Fiendlords of Tartaron were sealed away. Cosmic threat after cosmic threat fell, and it appeared as though the societies of Arkaden Dividre were on the verge of a golden age of peace. But still the Council found new and smaller tasks for Azalea to carry out in the role of a superspy, infiltrating the fortresses of enemies who posed a moderate national security risk at best, and gathering information of questionable value.

Then, something unthinkable happened back on Earth. Revolution had broken out across many populated countries, seemingly all at the same time. The violence that followed displaced countless enclaves of mages and cryptids, and they sought whatever means were available to migrate offworld, including the Council's own system of Plane-Binding Cairns. As a result, Arkaden was facing a refugee crisis of a scale not seen since the Hellenistic Purge.

Azzy was horrified and infuriated. The Mage's Council had had her chasing phantoms while a very real threat on Earth was gathering strength, using propaganda to recruit armies of aggrieved citizens, and throwing the planet into chaos. People she spent her whole adult life protecting were suddenly dying by the thousands, and everything she had worked so hard to achieve was on the brink of coming undone. All because her employer was so prone to ignoring the concerns of other planes - even the ancestral home of many of Arkaden's own people, to which Arkaden was closely bound. Her conscience could no longer allow her to be a de facto soldier of the state. Neither could her fraying, panic-stricken emotional state. And so, in 2017, Azalea turned in her badge. Then she fled to the only place familiar to her that she knew to be safe: her home planet of Tradugu.

During her exile in the small oasis town of Baluk, some 50 miles south of the metropolis Zyagen-Hezemvu, Azalea stayed in the monk's quarters of a Savaronist church and attended its services regularly. The monks bristled at her strange clothing and lackluster table manners - they knew she'd lived offworld for most of her life, but it was still striking to watch her carry herself so unlike a native Omarian seeking enlightenment. Yet they could sense her desperation for answers by how deep she dove into the holy texts and how intently she listened to every sermon. They could not turn away this person who believed herself a failure and wished so badly to atone. She was a refugee from herself.

In her fourth month living in the monastery, Azalea was called to the chambers of the high priest. "Jenalla, Daughter of Hakon," he said, referring to her by her given name. "You have accepted our hospitality for a long while now, and you are always in the audience to hear the daily wisdom, yet still you have expressed no desire to become a monk full-time. I sense that your heart remains sick and unfulfilled. Please tell me, what troubles you?"

This was followed by several minutes worth of pressing, crying, and soothing, to which Azzy finally confessed: "I want to go home. But I don't think I'm worthy of it. I'm not sure I will ever be. I lose sleep wondering if there's anything I could have done to stem the tide of evil that consumes it."

"You are but one person," said the high priest. "You should not be concerned with creating a name for yourself to make yourself 'worthy,' for such efforts don't matter within the scheme of the Great Creation. Nor should you carry upon your shoulders the weight of an entire world, when its very existence would not be possible without the work of billions who came before you."

"In my head I understand this," said Azalea. "But my soul feels differently. I have gifts that no one else has. I had plenty of opportunity to use them to stop the madness, and I missed it."

"Savarona had gifts too," said the high priest. "But she did not repel the Shen Marek by herself. It took an army. It took all of Tradugu's nations coming together and trusting each other." His four hands interlocked their fingers in an intricate pattern. "Savaro is the whole greater than the sum of our parts, and it is through Savaro that the impossible is made real. Your name means 'faith.' You, literally, would not exist without that trust."

Azalea breathed a heavy sigh. "I guess... I'm having a lot of trouble trusting humans now, after all that's happened back on Earth."

The priest simply cracked a crooked smile. "Do you remember why Savaro split themself into countless pieces, forming the matters and energies we know today?"

"Sure I do," said Azalea. "They wanted to push the boundaries of all their power and knowledge, and discover all there is to discover."

"Exactly," said the high priest. "Now tell me: Can a single brain, even the brain of a Tradu, hold the sum total of all information in the universe?"

Azalea hesitated, then shook her head. "No. That's impossible. Even the smartest people I know can't remember what they had for breakfast sometimes."

The priest gently leaned forward with his hands resting on his desk. "There's a reason the Shen Marek sought to create a species like ours, and attempted to exterminate us when we became a threat to their interests," he said. "Our brains are indeed not meant to retain more than a small shred of expertise, but each person's depth and breadth of knowledge is unique and important to the Great Creation. When we put our trust in another person whose experiences are unlike ours, we add their knowledge to our own, and we feel the spark of Savaro. Indeed every Tradu we know has this trait, this unrelenting desire to be a part of something larger, because it increases our understanding and brings closure. Like lightning, it is a wonderful and dangerous gift, and there is real science supporting its existence. And it can be turned towards evil as well as good."

Azalea closed her eyes and considered this. "So what you're saying is, I don't have to be a superhero. None of us does. But we can do super things when we work together?"

"That's a trite way of putting it," said the priest. "But basically, yes."

Azzy thought back to all the friends she'd left behind on Earth and Arkaden. They, too, had gifts, and she missed them terribly. Then, like a stray hair exposed to a bolt of lightning, she stood upright and stiff, feeling at last like she had a purpose, and smiled her widest in months. "I have an idea."

================================================================

And with the de facto leader of the team finally given an overdue portrait (not counting the two-headed one, who knows if that's even canon?), all seven members of Head Count are present and accounted for. ^^

This one's dedicated to RappyRPG, whom I can't thank enough for her guidance and imagination that helped launch all my story ideas. Now let's see if I can actually write some.

~Az

Description
It was a heated argument between Azalea Cloud and Elder Nybran Daggerwind that hammered the final nail in the coffin of the former's career as a Dash-Gyal - an intelligence and peacekeeping agent of the Council of Draconic Inheritors. For too long the alien had trusted her superiors that the time for the lifting of the Masquerade Protocol would soon come. The anti-magic terrorist paramilitary known as HOME had been dismantled and defeated. An uneasy but important truce was brokered with the Jotun Legion. The Seven Fiendlords of Tartaron were sealed away. Cosmic threat after cosmic threat fell, and it appeared as though the societies of Arkaden Dividre were on the verge of a golden age of peace. But still the Council found new and smaller tasks for Azalea to carry out in the role of a superspy, infiltrating the fortresses of enemies who posed a moderate national security risk at best, and gathering information of questionable value.

Then, something unthinkable happened back on Earth. Revolution had broken out across many populated countries, seemingly all at the same time. The violence that followed displaced countless enclaves of mages and cryptids, and they sought whatever means were available to migrate offworld, including the Council's own system of Plane-Binding Cairns. As a result, Arkaden was facing a refugee crisis of a scale not seen since the Hellenistic Purge.

Azzy was horrified and infuriated. The Mage's Council had had her chasing phantoms while a very real threat on Earth was gathering strength, using propaganda to recruit armies of aggrieved citizens, and throwing the planet into chaos. People she spent her whole adult life protecting were suddenly dying by the thousands, and everything she had worked so hard to achieve was on the brink of coming undone. All because her employer was so prone to ignoring the concerns of other planes - even the ancestral home of many of Arkaden's own people, to which Arkaden was closely bound. Her conscience could no longer allow her to be a de facto soldier of the state. Neither could her fraying, panic-stricken emotional state. And so, in 2017, Azalea turned in her badge. Then she fled to the only place familiar to her that she knew to be safe: her home planet of Tradugu.

During her exile in the small oasis town of Baluk, some 50 miles south of the metropolis Zyagen-Hezemvu, Azalea stayed in the monk's quarters of a Savaronist church and attended its services regularly. The monks bristled at her strange clothing and lackluster table manners - they knew she'd lived offworld for most of her life, but it was still striking to watch her carry herself so unlike a native Omarian seeking enlightenment. Yet they could sense her desperation for answers by how deep she dove into the holy texts and how intently she listened to every sermon. They could not turn away this person who believed herself a failure and wished so badly to atone. She was a refugee from herself.

In her fourth month living in the monastery, Azalea was called to the chambers of the high priest. "Jenalla, Daughter of Hakon," he said, referring to her by her given name. "You have accepted our hospitality for a long while now, and you are always in the audience to hear the daily wisdom, yet still you have expressed no desire to become a monk full-time. I sense that your heart remains sick and unfulfilled. Please tell me, what troubles you?"

This was followed by several minutes worth of pressing, crying, and soothing, to which Azzy finally confessed: "I want to go home. But I don't think I'm worthy of it. I'm not sure I will ever be. I lose sleep wondering if there's anything I could have done to stem the tide of evil that consumes it."

"You are but one person," said the high priest. "You should not be concerned with creating a name for yourself to make yourself 'worthy,' for such efforts don't matter within the scheme of the Great Creation. Nor should you carry upon your shoulders the weight of an entire world, when its very existence would not be possible without the work of billions who came before you."

"In my head I understand this," said Azalea. "But my soul feels differently. I have gifts that no one else has. I had plenty of opportunity to use them to stop the madness, and I missed it."

"Savarona had gifts too," said the high priest. "But she did not repel the Shen Marek by herself. It took an army. It took all of Tradugu's nations coming together and trusting each other." His four hands interlocked their fingers in an intricate pattern. "Savaro is the whole greater than the sum of our parts, and it is through Savaro that the impossible is made real. Your name means 'faith.' You, literally, would not exist without that trust."

Azalea breathed a heavy sigh. "I guess... I'm having a lot of trouble trusting humans now, after all that's happened back on Earth."

The priest simply cracked a crooked smile. "Do you remember why Savaro split themself into countless pieces, forming the matters and energies we know today?"

"Sure I do," said Azalea. "They wanted to push the boundaries of all their power and knowledge, and discover all there is to discover."

"Exactly," said the high priest. "Now tell me: Can a single brain, even the brain of a Tradu, hold the sum total of all information in the universe?"

Azalea hesitated, then shook her head. "No. That's impossible. Even the smartest people I know can't remember what they had for breakfast sometimes."

The priest gently leaned forward with his hands resting on his desk. "There's a reason the Shen Marek sought to create a species like ours, and attempted to exterminate us when we became a threat to their interests," he said. "Our brains are indeed not meant to retain more than a small shred of expertise, but each person's depth and breadth of knowledge is unique and important to the Great Creation. When we put our trust in another person whose experiences are unlike ours, we add their knowledge to our own, and we feel the spark of Savaro. Indeed every Tradu we know has this trait, this unrelenting desire to be a part of something larger, because it increases our understanding and brings closure. Like lightning, it is a wonderful and dangerous gift, and there is real science supporting its existence. And it can be turned towards evil as well as good."

Azalea closed her eyes and considered this. "So what you're saying is, I don't have to be a superhero. None of us does. But we can do super things when we work together?"

"That's a trite way of putting it," said the priest. "But basically, yes."

Azzy thought back to all the friends she'd left behind on Earth and Arkaden. They, too, had gifts, and she missed them terribly. Then, like a stray hair exposed to a bolt of lightning, she stood upright and stiff, feeling at last like she had a purpose, and smiled her widest in months. "I have an idea."

================================================================

And with the de facto leader of the team finally given an overdue portrait (not counting the two-headed one, who knows if that's even canon?), all seven members of Head Count are present and accounted for. ^^

This one's dedicated to RappyRPG, whom I can't thank enough for her guidance and imagination that helped launch all my story ideas. Now let's see if I can actually write some.

~Az