Arthur opened his mouth, closed it, and then let out a ‘tch’ at her response, his gaze upon the spires resumed with a renewed frown of brooding skepticism.

“Let’s say I do agree. What manner of impact would I have with none of my skills available to me? You intend on armoring me in ignorance and lies, and sending me to a backwater hole of civilization with no more than the clothes on my back—clothes that, frankly, are an insult to my lineage! You must tell me something, Inquisitor.”

“Your body will remember what your mind does not.” Nataliya assured him. “And that will be enough to ensure your survival until your memories properly awaken.”

“How delightfully unhelpful.” Arthur said snidely. “And still you give no answers!”

“The answers must come when you are ready to receive them.” the Inquisitor replied. “Telling you now would be inviting disaster, if not outright sabotaging your chance at survival.”

“Your continued abeyance from specificity does not inspire confidence, Inquisitor.”

“I understand, my lord. Truly I do. This is, however, the nature of the calling. Your calling.” Her tone hardened as she said it. “Terra summons you to serve, Lord Zacaris. Will you answer?”

Arthur stared at the spires for another long and ponderous minute as a thousand different reasons to tell the Inquisitor, powerful and indomitable as she was, to go to the deepest void of the frontier rolled through his mind. A dozen different ideas for escape, up to and including summoning other Knights of the Round roiled through his mind.

A coward, his father had often called him. A son of a whore with no spine. A bastard absent the drive, the passion, or the will to succeed. Arthur had proved him wrong with blade and machine both, and devastated those sent to crush him.

He had won his laurels, his rights, and his recognition at the edge of his sword. He had been fighting hatred since his birth. Even his name, Arthur, had been a mockery—that was why they had paired it with his middle name.

The traitor. The abomination. The fiend.

Arthur sighed, and closed his eyes to listen.

To listen to his father’s voice, claiming he was a coward with no resolve.

To listen to his grandfather before him, mocking his abysmal Callandium capacity.

Arthur let out a low, resigned breath in surrender and forced himself to be calm.

None of them would ever imagine him capable of what Nataliya asked of him.

Arthur’s eyes opened, and he locked his gaze on the Inquisitor’s own.

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“Yes, Inquisitor.” he said at last. “I, Arthur Mordred Zacaris, will answer the call.”

Arthur’s mind returned to him slowly. It grew from a spark of awareness of self into a slow and consistent ember, which continued to gather momentum and strength from there.

Distantly he felt as if he could hear voices, though in his mental fugue all he could parse was vague intonations and the implication of urgency from the unclear nature of tense intonations.

“...risks are—find out about—keep it to ourselves—wrath on us all—...”

“...cannot tell—we investigate further—the interim—enough caution for belief—”

A low groan escaped Arthur’s lips when the ember of awareness erupted into a blaze of cognizance, and he felt his mind snap back into equilibrium.

And with it, the awareness of Arthur Zacaris once more.

His true self. His true mind.

Information, awareness, and knowledge hammered into his consciousness with the thunder of an avalanche. The half-heard and distorted words of those around him faded to nothingness under the deluge, and Arthur snapped back to consciousness with a sharp intake of air, and a surge of shock.

The Inquisitor had erased him. She had replaced everything he was with a fabrication, one designed to obfuscate and perfectly suppress everything he knew to be true. She had deleted him. She had removed him as if he’d never been. It was perverse. It was infuriating.

It was existentially terrifying.

Worse, he had agreed to it.

Arthur felt his heart race while memories long forgotten surged to the fore of his mind, escaping from where they had been buried beneath layers of psionic power. His entire life in Aurelia was a lie. The information would pass any manner of investigation, because Nataliya Verchenko was nothing if not thorough like all her ilk, but he’d never truly existed there. He had never lived there. He had never even visited Aurelia, really.

Arthur Magellan was a complete fabrication.

He was Arthur Mordred Zacaris, of Pendragon.

He was the most lethal Knight of the Round Table.

He was a Coreblood of the most celebrated lines, bred in pursuit of perfection.

Another moment of thought crashed into him, and he shuddered while reaching up to grip his head. He remembered more. He remembered his staggeringly low Callandium compatibility. He remembered his father’s disappointment. He remembered the mockery, the vitriol, and the shame over an accident of birth he could no more have controlled than he could have willed a star to die.

More than anything else, he remembered himself and was able to view that remembered self more objectively. With only the limited insights into himself, and with the false but still existent medium of Arthur Magellan, he realized something quite immediately.

Arthur Zacaris had been disturbingly self-entitled and arrogant. The very idea of it unsettled and disquieted him. For all that he knew it was who he had been and perhaps even still was under it all, he wanted nothing to do with that particular element of his memory.

He’d come to have respect for Graecia, for Aurelia, for the struggles and realities of the outer sectors and their people. He momentarily wondered if perhaps that had been Nataliya’s plan, but the truth was that he had no context with which to weigh it. He recalled himself, yes, but so too was so much still missing.