It was the middle of the night. I was sitting on a branch in the forest, east of Hive. Before me was a small clearing with four animals lying still. They were sleeping. Because right now, our main body was awake.
“Fio. Your body. Please”, Catori said from within our soul.
“I’m pretty sure we’re still the same person.”
“We share a soul and memories. Just because we can use each others’ bodies doesn’t mean this is our body. You got yours, I got mine.”
I grudgingly let the argument drop. It had come up once every few hours since we started working on this. Which mostly was finding suitable test subjects. A careful look with [Sleep Talk] let me spot anything that was sleeping but we did not want to take animals that would not help the taint expedition.
The ones we had taken were a badger, a young but mature deer, a songbird that identified as a black-throated green warbler, and a smaller species of owl. A tawny owl, to be exact. I had hesitated a moment with that one before I realized the bird was food to my instincts. Catori apologized after that. I was not sure for what.
“So, how do we want to do this?”, I asked.
“There’s really only one way I can think this will work without issues. Familiarizing yourself with the body to the point you can see its status menu. Like what I did.”
“With the horse?”
“Oh, bugger off. Yes, but I was more thinking about the starling. You know, my body?”
“Yeah, that makes sense. But we don’t need to avoid issues. We just need a reliable way to kill ourselves. Wow. That sounded darker than I expected.”
“What did you expect? But yeah, destabilizing the body isn’t the problem. We just want to cut it off from our soul as quickly as we can. Technically, killing it isn’t even necessary.”
“That makes sense. So just get enough familiarity to push in a small amount of perditio or vacuos? Or do you have a better idea?”
“… have we tried cancelling the Skill?”
I froze.
“Huh. Nope. Let’s see.”
I focused on [Distant Dreaming]. The Skill had reached level three at some point. It was very recent and I suspected the self-destruction had something to do with it. Soon, I could push for a Breakthrough. It might help out Catori as well.
The Skill created a connection to the bodies. Physically, there was nothing. The material world seemed completely unaffected by it. But looking deeper into our soul, I saw the thin connections leading to their bodies. It was all on the other side, though.
Still, I wrapped my mind around the connections and felt them out. It only took a moment to find which one led to which body. I made sure to leave Catori’s starling alone and took a closer look at the other four. The owl, strangely enough, had the most stable feeling to it. I wondered if that was because I was an owl as well. Maybe familiarity with the instincts made it easier to understand?
The warbler was, unexpectedly, not much more stable than the two land-bound animals. There was a tiny difference but it might have been my imagination. I decided to use the songbird for the first experiment.
“Okay, watch closely, Catori. Tell me if you think it’s getting dangerous.”
“You got it!”
My mind wrapped around the Skill like a hand around the handle of a knife. The plan was to sever the connection, after all. I oriented myself one more time, making sure nothing was in the way. Then, I pulled the link taught and set the knife to it. At first, I was especially careful. I wanted Catori to have a chance to warn me in case something went wrong. When she did not stop me, I pushed with more willpower. In an instant, the knife slit through. I felt a slight twitch in our soul but that was it. Looking at the warbler, I saw its tiny chest come to a stop.
~ding~ You have taken out your chosen target. Experience awarded.
“So, that’s a thing. It died but I got no level. Means it wasn’t really a lot of experience.”
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“That wasn’t too bad. But what’s gonna happen if you’re in there when we cut the connection? Can we even do that?”
I grimaced mentally.
“Yeah, that’s gonna be an issue. I don’t really want to…”
A strange feeling silenced me. It was as if a tiny clump of energy bumped into our soul. Then, it melted into us.
“You feel that?”, I asked.
Catori nodded. I felt her attention shift before Truth suddenly spoke up.
“You are doing interesting things again, Fio Catori. I can see you are enjoying yourselves.”
“Yeah”, Catori said, “But is that safe? What was that clump?”
“The part of your soul you cut off. It is impossible to split one soul permanently.”
When he said ‘one’, the word reverberated all throughout our being. With just that little addition, we understood. No matter how we cut our soul apart, it would always return to its true form.
“But be careful. If both of you cut yourself off at the same time, you may find another roommate once you return. There is also a risk of losing memories that have been stored in one of your remote selves.”
I tilted my head.
“Doesn’t that risk also exist when one of our remote bodies dies?”
“No. Death does not sever your soul. With how much you stabilized yourselves in this place it is near-impossible for you to lose any memories from such causes.”
“Huh”, Catori smirked, “Good to know. Say, Fio, want to get a third person in here?”
I groaned.
“No, thanks. I’m happy just having you there. And whoever’s gonna use my body then? I’d think they would use it and want to use it.”
“That… makes a lot of sense. Alright, sorry. I was just joking.”
I reassured her with a mental hug.
“It’s fine. Just having this chance is already interesting.”
“Then how do we proceed?”
I felt Truth retreat to do whatever he did in his free time.
“I think the memory loss is a serious issue if it gets bad. But we can work around it quite easily.”
“So do the exploration together, right?”
“Yup. You watch in case I lose some of the new memories. Everything else should be with both of us anyways. Right?”
“… Let me go through the recent stuff you did. I didn’t quite follow all of it. When I’m caught up, we can go ahead with the exploration.”
“Then I’ll get used to these bodies. Which one do you think is the best?”
“Just take the owl for the first trip. After that, I think it’s the deer. You’ll have a much higher vantage point and be able to run without issues. Though I don’t know how much the taint is going to affect you.”
“I got some plans for that as well.”
Catori sent me a smile.
“That’s good. I’ll leave you to it, then.”
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I took my time working out the countermeasures for taint. It was something that corrupted on contact. It was impossible to completely block with mundane means. Only silverwood or ethereal bloom would even give me a chance at surviving the trip. From what I knew, I had at least a few minutes even if I did end up losing a body. The secret laboratory in the Cathedral had taught me a bit about the stuff. I needed a way to cleanse it or… just kill the body from a distance.
The first thing I wanted to try was using some silverwood to make protective equipment for myself. Primarily for the talons, hooves or feet that would be touching the corrupted ground. I had a short but annoying conversation with Elder Leaf to get my talons on some freshly cut silverwood that I could do with what I wanted. They were not cultivating the trees for their wood but out of a need for protection. That was how I finally convinced her.
The simple ‘shoes’ I cobbled together were nothing too special. Simple wooden soles for the deer and badger with shimmerleaf padding inside to make them fit snugly. The tawny owl got something more like sheaths. It was a bit complicated to make them move with the bending feet but I managed. Still, the construction was flimsy and I was not about to trust it to protect my body from taint.
After the basic structure was done, I pushed a bunch of ordo into them to reinforce the structure and guide the cleansing effect of the wood. On a whim, I took out the silverwood sapling and placed the footwear close to it. A thin connection seemed to form that helped guide the energies. The result went for a test via throwing. I watched the extra badger shoe I made fly in a wide arc before landing on the purple ground and watched intently.
Nothing happened.
Absolutely nothing. No sizzling taint, no rotting wood, nothing. I took that as a good sign and decided to come back to check on it before setting out. Catori ended up not having found the time to go through all of my memories. I supposed she had her own life now. I told her it was fine and took the extra time I had to fly back to the ravine and take over the falcon I had found there. I planned to use this for a deeper run into the tainted area, maybe even trying to dive underneath the world to see how deep it went. There was surely something to be learned from that.