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eriisaam · 3 months ago

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Meet Ephrel Fiore: The Prodigious Summoner. Also meet their alter ego, Spectabilis: Longing Dream.

World of Origin: World of Digimon (World of Steel adjacent to the Digital World)

Supports: Sparrow, Chrom, Robin (male), Lyon

Warning: The following lore includes suicide, and graphic mentions of injuries. If you are uncomfortable with this, please skip this post.

Before Sparrow became a summoner, there was Ephrel, and before they were a summoner, they were a digimon tamer first and foremost, having raised a fairly impressive number of digimon in their estate secured in the Digital World, for which they gradually became aware of digimon existing well past their original preface as characters of an elaborate game, and with which they connected and maintained strong bonds with. Of the digimon they hand-reared, cared for, and strengthened, they have three primary partners that make up their main team: An angewomon (Angelique, or Angie), a ladydevimon (Devinia, or Devi), and a grappuleomon (Leona).

Upon being isekai'd into Askr as a summoner, during the time Askr and Embla's growing war were reaching its peak, Ephrel responded to Askr's lack of support by agreeing to call upon their digimon to aid them as war assets and supports, in particular their three partners, who flanked the Order of Heroes directly, both with and without Summoner Ephrel present. It proved more than enough to suffice in order to keep Askr from otherwise folding under Embla through sheer raw manpower alone.

Seeing the sudden turn-around, Veronica took notice of Ephrel's command over digimon kind, and when her efforts to try to force contracts directly onto the digimon failed, due to their striking differences from a typical hero otherwise, she turned to try to find alternatives to match Askr's digimon forces with some of her own. Unfortunately, rather than finding her own digimon, be it from Jotunheimr or otherwise, what the Curse Directive found was - not a means to summon digimon for them to command, as originally thought - but uncovered a way to bring forth their ancient enemy, the kenzoku. They're among a long extinct, highly dangerous species whom the ancestors of digimon long ago opposed, back when they were the youkai-adjacent species known at the time as the kemonogami. Whether this was an honest mistake of the Curse Directive stumbling too soon to a mess Eitri started that was far too great for them to fully contain, or the early signs to Letizia's eventual betrayal of Veronica and Bruno, even now neither Askr nor Embla were fully certain, but regardless, instead of arm Embla with a proper counter to dismantling Askr's digimon reinforcements, it awoken an outbreak of highly volatile, dangerous kenzoku who attempted to infest both lands.

So early on in Ephrel's tenure as summoner, they jumped to the task of subduing and shutting down the outbreak of kenzoku at their source, and eliminating them with their digimon forces before they could spread too far to contain, thereby sparing Askr and Embla both from utter devastation.

But it came at a terrible cost...

In the process, one of Ephrel's three partners, Leona, was gravely wounded and fell in the ensuing battles. More, it devastated Alfonse when Ephrel's Breidablik was discharged in the confusion and chaos, and in what would've been a blow aimed at Alfonse, it was a blow Ephrel intercepted, and was mortally wounded by, directly in Alfonse's line of sight. Despite the prince's attempts, he even outright fell just shy of rescuing the mortally-wounded Ephrel, before they fell from a great height, surely sealing their fate.

The legendary weapon, their summoner, and the commander of their digimon army and one of their treasured partners, were all lost, and it devastated Alfonse and shattered his already-fragile confidence as a commanding presence of the Order of Heroes in one fell swoop.

Due to the nature of how Ephrel was killed, where their body was lost, their soul was summoned into another world. Another life, away from Zenith, disconnected from their digimon, their Breidablik, and far and away from the devastation of the aftermath of their first life.

Instead, they were now a tactician. Not quite amnesiac, but disoriented enough to not quite be all-there either, they were isekai'd in a form of a robinsona, and with it, hijacked a life of what should've been a Robin's.

They woke up being picked up by Chrom, like Robin should've done. Though trying their best to convey their past, what happened, where they came from, what little they remembered... it was too much to take it all in, too much to convey all at once, and between Chrom's confusion of it all, or flat out thinking 'Robin' was simply delirious from the fatigue of it all, it brought Chrom closer to them through sheer concern alone, but also kept Ephrel that much farther from a way to go back to Zenith, or their home, or the life they left behind.

So they resigned themself to filling in the role that would've been a Robin's role. Instead of a tactician in service of Alfonse of Askr, they were a tactician in service of Chrom to Ylisse. They served at Chrom's side, lived, fought, thrived, laughed, bled, all alongside the rest of The Shepards, and through it all, they and Chrom found love, and pledged to one another to be the winds on each other's backs, and the swords on each other's sides.

But just as Ephrel's hijacking of Robin's role was something that already broke the script of this World of Awakening, so too was the road that paved itself in front of them.

One by one, the Shepards fell. Then the number of the dead increased in general, at an alarming rate, despite Chrom's and Ephrel's efforts. It didn't matter if it was Ylisstol, Ferox, Plegia... they were ravaged by a force that went well beyond the conflicts and unrest Ylisse already held.

As had Ephrel, somehow, the kenzoku were also in this World of Awakening.

At first, Ephrel felt a pit in their stomach, initially thinking they somehow failed to seal the kenzoku away from Askr after all, and then led them directly here. But to their horror, the truth was much worse. Somehow, the infestation was already deep, and beyond critical in this world. A single kenzoku was already a tall order for a mercenary to fight directly, rather than a digimon, and there were endless amounts spilling forth.

This time, Ephrel was entirely without their digimon. Entirely without Breidablik. They were completely isolated from their previous life, and everything that came with it, including a proper means to fight the kenzoku, as they already laid their life down to do once before.

Chrom, Ephrel, and Validar were all that remained, and through their last efforts, Validar fell to the couple, before he could call upon Grima, and compound what threads remained of this world and make it worse.

But in his dying breath, he still managed to succeed, just as he was destined to before. Just as Robin would be overwhelmed and overtaken by Grima, Validar ensured that, so too, would Ephrel.

But there was a disconnect, even in Ephrel's possessed state. How much of them was Grima? How much of them was Robin? For what worked more seamlessly with Robin, how much did Ephrel's soul interfere with what should've been Robin's fate?

The answer was just enough for Ephrel to retain control of their body, long enough to see what Grima was fighting them for, and enough to do what they must.

Rather than take Chrom's life, in their final moments, they took their own life instead, and so, Chrom became the sole survivor of his world. There were no healers left. Despite Chrom's attempts to save Ephrel from taking their own life, with a magic-channeled sword meant for him, he burned through his gloves enough to shred into the skin of his palms and sear into him a permanent reminder of his failure to Ephrel, but was ultimately no closer to rescue his love.

And even as the realization crashed down on him all at once how he was truly alone, in a world threatening to crumble around him and consume him, Chrom didn't even have the chance to despair or grieve.

What Chrom and Alfonse hadn't realized was that while Ephrel had created two devastating lifetimes worth of grief across either princess, their first death had already caught the attention of not just Hel, but Freyja. The awareness of a summoner falling so early and so unusually had attracted either gods to try to retrieve the summoner, but in wanting them for their own purposes, both gods turned on and fought against one another over who would claim the dead summoner. It was far from the first instance of such a feud, as Freyr was reminded all too well, but between Freyja's own might, give or take Freyr's added assistance, she prevailed, and retrieved Ephrel's summoner corpse that Alfonse failed otherwise to safekeep.

She tracked down the soul as well, and as if appearing out of nowhere, from Chrom's perspective, she traced both Ephrel's weapon and soul, and claimed the tactician's soul next, while casting away Chrom in the process, despite his protests and attempts to fight her off. Indirectly, she wound up rescuing Chrom from otherwise fading out of existence along with his dying world, but in doing so, she inadvertently gave Ephrel's soul one last chance to reconnect with Breidablik, long enough to transfer its ownership to Chrom instead, as the next summoner, adding to what spirited him away from his would-be fate.

Unfortunately, while Freyja retrieved Ephrel's soul to go with the body, what became of the tactician's now empty husk became a cocktail of various conflicting forces. A corpse that was hijacked, a husk infested with the miasma of the kenzoku's poisoning influence that already overtook the world, and now Grima's influence trying desperately to claw at a failing body.

The tactician's corpse reanimated itself - not as Grima, but not entirely far removed from him either - having become a whole new being entirely of confusion, delirium, and a completely feral mind that began eating its own body from the inside out in an unusual, glitched, broken state, like a computer program given sentience, only to decay by the bits.

That creature also tried to fight Freyja - not quite in Ephrel's defense - but in raw animalistic confusion, and just like Chrom before them, she swiftly sent them away, out of sight, and far out of mind.

She had a higher priority, and in reuniting Ephrel's lost soul to the hard-fought trophy of a body, Freyja reconnected them and forcefed them dream nectar as a means to glue the two components together, and in the process, Ephrel was reborn once more, now as the dokkalfar, Spectabilis.

Through Spectabilis, them being much older than Triandra and Plumeria, Freyja held a less motherly regard for them like she did for her other two dokkalfarians. Ephrel was not their surrogate child (pretend, genuine, or a lie that Freyja stuck deep and long enough to turn into truth over time otherwise), but a guardian. They would be her general. They would be strengthened, weaponized, and given a far more intimidating aura and presence compared to Triandra or Plumeria, all in the name of protecting the three. They would be their attendant, just as they would be hers, and though she lost sight of Breidablik when the weapon was spirited off with the Ylissian prince, she would make do otherwise, knowing it was a summoner she could keep this time, compared to her previous attempt and failure long ago against Hel.

She would exploit Ephrel, grow complacent enough to soften around them against herself, and her feelings reached a peak when eventually, as Sparrow would arrive to pick up where Ephrel left off, and Chrom would challenge her once more for Ephrel's freedom, she fought mightily in her heightened emotions at the mere thought of losing Ephrel to the mortals, enough so as to warp Ephrel's will and mind to weaponize them as Spectabilis against them.

Freyr, however, recalled the previous loss of another summoner who slipped through Freyja's fingers once before, and in reliving the memories of a similar devoted couple who tragically died in their sight and arms under similar circumstances, he couldn't allow this to pass a second time, and intervened. Their conflict was long, grueling, and challenged every summoner and support in reliving their worst memories and traumas, to the point of even causing harm to Freyja's beloved dokkalfarians in kind. In the end, with a reluctant truce, Freyja allowed her dokkalfarians, Spectabilis included, to aid Askr in their cause, and once more, Ephrel reunited with the rest of Askr, and with Sparrow and the digimon Ephrel left behind.

With Ephrel reinstated, and allowed to resume their third life freely as they choose, the matter came up of their alfr form. Part curiosity, and part attempt at atonement, Lyon had conducted research through the combination of resources provided to him, be it from Ephrel directly, the abilities of other summoners like Eclair, or through digimon of unusual properties like Tangie. To his relief, he invented a fae stone - one that proved effective and far and well steered away from a potential repeat incident of his invention of a dark stone long ago - and he was able to find a cure to allow an alfr to return to human form, a research project Ephrel was willing to participate in as a just-in-case measure (despite none of the other alfr thus far wishing to reverse the process otherwise).

Unfortunately, the effects proved only temporary. Ephrel had to keep the stone in a certain proximity to themself on their person, or the effects will immediately reverse, and they'll resume their form as Spectabilis all over again, whether they intended to or not. More, although they can freely alternate between their human and dokkalfarian form through equipping or unequipping their fae stone locket, they also had an immediately noticeable side effect where while their hair returned to their state prior to being an alfr (no longer fused with bits and pieces of floral or vegetation thereof), their pigment still retained the colors their alfr form converted them into, and would require further repeated upkeep to change out of otherwise. To this, Ephrel brushed it off, leaving their unusual hair color as-is through a combination of not feeling up to fussing of it, and finding it a neat novelty anyways.

When Sparrow had otherwise retained Breidablik proper, after Chrom had (subconsciously) turned over ownership of it to her upon their initial meeting, Ephrel, rather than retrieve the weapon, instead opts to focus on weaponizing their flower of fate instead, but otherwise assists Sparrow in co-managing the role of summoner alongside her. While they seamlessly picked up where they left off with Chrom, they also had a hand in assisting Chrom's newfound partners through their dreams prior to their rescue, and it's through Ephrel that the Order of Heroes could gain audience, and sometimes, outright aid from Freyja, particularly upon certain pointed encounters later down the road from Njordr's attempts to manipulate Eclair, to the discovery of the vanir of the World of Beasts, Gaia, and exposing the previous connection between Freyja and her upon their reunion.

#Summoner OC Ephrel #Summoner OC #FEH OC #Fire Emblem Heroes #FEH #World of a Golden Fate #Suddenly Lore #Erii draws things

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