Huh, Hades looks reminiscent of Ascian Prime, most notably with the long arms and long claws. I guess that's the general look of empowered Ascians?
I still don't understand why Emet was seemingly so much more powerful than Ascian Prime. Lahabrea should be slightly more powerful, as he absorbed another 1/14th of a soul in Igeyorhm.
Now this is strange. At first, I thought that this was setting up the Ardbert, the First's fragment of
The 14th Member of the Convocation/ The WoL, Hydaelyn's Champion with the Source's fragment, but then I remembered that Ardbert and the Source WoL together make up the same soul. Lahabrea was not sundered, and yet here he is, merging with the shard of a different soul. So apparently people with the Echo can merge with other souls, not just fragments of their own soul?
If so, then I could see either Elidibus or Zenos gobbling up the soul fragments of the other Ascians. They're going to have be dealt with at some point. If you factor in the fact that there are 14 fragments (and discounting
The WoL, Emet, Lahabrea, and Elidibus), you have 140 Ascian fragments to deal with. The WoL killed one fragment of Nabriales in 2.5 and the WoL just killed Igeyorhm. That leaves 138 Ascian fragments. Yes, Gaius was going around killing Ascians, but there is no indication that he was using Auracite to destroy their soul fragments. There were probably more than a few Ascian fragments who managed to get themselves perma killed over the thousands of years, but the fact remains that there are almost certainly far too many outstanding Ascian fragments than is feasible to be perma killed by the WoL. Auracite is incredibly the difficult to procure, and a situation like Nidhogg's Eye gobbling up an Ascian is unlikely to happen again, let alone 100 something times. Therefore, I surmise that the remaining fragments will probably be perma killed offscreen, either by Elidibus or Zenos, or possibly Zodiark.
... Unless Ascian fragments aren't innately evil? Emet said that they only go around, fetching Ascian fragments when their position needs to be filled. It could be that Ascian fragments are reincarnated and live normal lives up until Elidibus shows up and gives him his side of the story. The Oracle of Darkness could be an Ascian soul fragment. If we could show her the truth, and she decides to no longer serve Zodiark, then perhaps we won't need to deal with the dozens of remaining Ascian soul fragments at all.
However, if the Ascians were tempered, then are the Ascian fragments unwittingly serving Zodiark, even without knowledge of their true origins? If so, then they will all have to be put down to keep them from resummoning Zodiark. Thus, they'll probably all die offscreen... unless Alisae manages to reverse tempering. In that case, that raises the logistical problems of trying to travel to the other seven remaining shards, track down Ascian soul fragments, and then untemper them. I don't think the story will be going to any other worlds besides the Source, the First, and the Thirteenth. Elidibus is already sending the WoL's remaining soul fragments towards him. Will the WoL be completely rejoined before 6.0? Or are they saving that as the ultimate, climatic powerup transformation for the ending?