nine ♓ video;

[cullscuttlefish]

[Feferi's gray skin looks pale as she steps forward, and it's clear that she's shaking. But she takes a deep breath, because this is too important not to tell everyone.]

My name is Feferi Peixes. Anyone who knows me knows I'm infamous for fish puns, but I'm going to hold off on them here, just so the message is as clear as possible. I don't want it to get twisted by a bad turn of phrase.


The message you all saw about the soul thing...it's true. I know, because...

[She takes another deep breath, swallowing hard.]

I went down the elevator, with some others, when we saw it open. We had to take the chance. We needed to know what was down there.

When the group I was with saw a soul being extracted from a dead person, we couldn't believe what we were seeing. More than anything, we knew what a precious thing that was. We didn't want it to be harmed, and so we followed where the retrieval unit was taking it.

...we didn't expect that it would be carrying the soul straight to Jason. We confronted him, we refused to give up the presence of the other groups that were in the administrators' area, and he punished us by forcing us to go through the soul extraction and re-implantation processes while we were still conscious.

Before I go on any further, I have to stress this point: DO NOT TAKE THIS AS AN INVITATION TO CONFRONT JASON. He will not hesitate to put you through that process, and no one should ever have to experience a thing like that. I don't want anyone to consider this as an invitation to take some kind of vengeance. That path only leads to pain.

I didn't think that he was actually capable of anything close to mercy until I went through that. Everyone in this tower has been through it while unconscious, and that is truly a mercy. When it happens, your body is taken downstairs and placed into a sphere. That sphere fills with a violet liquid, and then it begins to contract.

[Tears start to run down her cheeks as she remembers, and her voice cracks.]

It quite literally squeezes your soul out of your body, and that is like no physical pain in this or any other universe. I don't think there is a single word that is capable of describing it. Agony isn't strong enough, because the pain keeps going while you feel your body stop working.

And even when you are only that shining light, the pain doesn't fade immediately. It takes time.

Then, you're surgically put into - into a...a new body. I...

[She can't keep talking. She breaks down sobbing, and then the feed cuts.]

Comments

[true_noir]

Curious.

[She says nothing else. There is nothing else TO say. The process is far more 'mechanical' than the ones that she knew in her last world, but it is all the same a process she can comprehend in a fairly basic sense.

The details are unknown to her, but they do not surprise her. She also would wager that, if the fluids were involved somehow, that the body she inhabited was comprised or related to the fluid in her collar, and that it was the means of housing 'her' within the frame she wore, a cohesion that kept her intact.

And in the end, none of it really mattered.]

[cullscuttlefish]

That's one way of putting it...

[true_noir]

I rarely put things in the way most people would. You have verified they possess our life force and can recreate our bodies in a painful and agonizing process, and that their possession of our life force is why we cannot leave this place.

Would that be the ... gist of what you have learned?

[cullscuttlefish]

I don't know for sure that it's how they recreate our bodies, but it's certainly how they "revive" us after we "die". The fact that our souls are bound to this place is why we can't leave it, yes. It - it has to be why they've said in the past that the Tower itself loses people.

That's the gist of it, yes.

[true_noir]

It seems a logical solution to the problem of the tower's ... let's just call them eccentricities [Yes, because slathering, life-threatening monsters were just 'quirks' to her new home.]. It certainly fits one of a few options for how they handled it. I'm inclined to believe you.

I do not know that it says anything about our worlds, but it does say a great deal about our status here.

[cullscuttlefish]

Eccentricities is a good enough word for them. There were a few ways they could have handled this. I...to tell the truth, I'm kind of glad that while I came soul-to-face - as odd as that sounds; I could still sense things when I wasn't in my body - with my body, I didn't run into something like a clone of myself.

It does, indeed.

[true_noir]

Without full knowledge, I am not sure that I feel able to comment on those ways.

hmmm...

You are saying that, until the new connection was established, you were still linked to the first frame?

[You should know... that very question was increasing the likelihood that she wanted to talk to Jason one day.]

[cullscuttlefish]

It's hard to explain. It wasn't a physical connection to anything, though. I think I only felt the pain because it was just that strong. The rest of it was sensing, not so much really seeing or feeling or hearing anything.

[She can't stop anyone from talking to him, though if she knew that, she would discourage it. Surgery like that is not pleasant, and his operating principle is more cutting, less talking.]

[true_noir]

Interesting. Thank you for sharing that, whatever it does for us in the meantime. I am not sure what it truly changes for me.