SWITCHBOARD

[transmittable]

If you'd like to ask the Transmitter something over the phone, go right ahead! The Transmitter will answer the phone as soon as she's available. Leaving messages is impossible, given how old these phones are, but you should be able to reach her at almost all hours.

Comments are screened for privacy; all Patients are offered confidentiality, didn't you know?

Comments

[transmittable]

...I'm tired. It's the first one, and I'm already tired.

Now that we've started, we're going to keep going.

[nachetanya]

[ . . . ]

I know you won't answer this, but you know I need to ask: have you overseen these before?

[transmittable]

I can tell you this isn't the first of these games. Nothing more.

[nachetanya]

I had thought so.

[ Mmm. ]

It's strange that you would be overseeing this, actually. Or do all the Risen not enjoy this either?

[transmittable]

It was deemed best I take this role. It would be worse if they did.

[nachetanya]

Mmm.

[ she has a few theories there, but... ]

You had said you wanted us to survive, is our purpose here already lost if you think this is going to keep happening?

[transmittable]

No. Far from it, honestly.

[nachetanya]

Does that mean that your own personal desires are at odds with our purpose, or do I have too little information to understand it yet?

[transmittable]

Everything's a little conflicted...but you also do have too little information.

[nachetanya]

I know I do.

[ Exhale.

She leans back, stretching out her back ]

I did and still do have questions for you, but now that we're talking, with how tired you sound, it only makes me feel more tired. Is there something you'd rather discuss?

[transmittable]

[ A pause, and an increase of feedback. ]

What about...your world?

[nachetanya]

Ah, alright. What would you like to know about it? Just any story?

[transmittable]

Yeah. Any story'd be cool.

[nachetanya]

... I apologize, because this story isn't the happiest story. But it is at the core of everything in my world.

A thousand years ago, the Evil God appeared. No one really knows how or why it is, it just appeared on the continent. Once it did, the tendrils of its power spread across the land and killed. It split its body into more forms, which became the fiends, and they killed. They killed and killed. The human power which controlled the world at the time, the Eternal Empire of Rohane, tried to field armies to fight the Evil God and its fiends, but they too were all killed. Eventually, the royal family was killed too, and the cities and towns of Rohane were burned to the ground, scoured from the world.

The people of that age began to despair, accepting that their only fate in living was simply to die.

Until a saint appeared. She held a single flower, and so she was called the Saint of the Single Flower. Today, we call her the Goddess of Fate as well, because once she appeared, she started off on a long, long battle against the Evil God. She was able to draw its form and forces back across the continent, into an inlet that we now call the Wailing Demon Territory. She defeated the Evil God, but she suffered greatly for it, losing fingers and spilling tears.

When she returned, she told the world that the Evil God was not dead though, merely sealed, and that some day it would awaken and once more turn the world into a living hell. She prophesied that when that day came, that her power would fall into the hands of the six strongest warriors in the world, who have proved themselves ready to be what we call the Braves of Six Flowers, because they bear her crest upon their bodies.

And after that, she vanished from the world. The world returned to peace for three hundred years after that... before the first time Evil God awakened again. But that time, seven hundred years ago, the first group of Braves managed to defeat it a second time. And then again with the second group was called three hundred years ago.

And now... again. The group I'm a part of is the third group of Six Flowers.

[transmittable]

[ While Nachetanya speaks, the feedback drops to a low level. So the Transmitter can hear better? Maybe. Either way, it means she can hear a gentle but intent breath. She has the Transmitter's attention. ]

Wow. It sounds like something from a movie, or a book. Is there any rhyme or reason as to how long between the times the Evil God appears?

[nachetanya]

All Heavens Temple has Jewel of Prophecy which tracks the movement of fiends on the continent. While the Evil God is in a deep sleep, the fiends usually remain in the Wailing Demon Territory and, well, wail! It's often only closer to when the Evil God grows more awake that the fiends set out into the mainland. So that's one method - it grew more and more cloudy over the last decade, and cracked last year. Other than that, we know from the last two times that the Evil God seems to awaken around every three centuries.

[transmittable]

Are all fiends, uh, evil? Sounds like it, if they come from the Evil God.

[nachetanya]

No.

[ ... ah. She said it. ]

... I once more ask that you don't share this with the others. But no, not at all. In fact, I might go so far as to say that none of the fiends are "evil," necessarily.

[transmittable]

What you tell me is confidential. We're...in a hospital, remember?

So then, why do they do it?

[nachetanya]

Because that's what the will of the Evil God is.

[ . . . ]

The Evil God, as it is right now, is confused and violent. A malevolent will which knows only about killing. It's impossible for a human-- ... Ah, I don't mean to assume you're human, but. In any case, it's impossible to overstate how much the Evil God means to them. It's something like a parent, a deity, and a part of themselves all wrapped up into one entity. Only thirty percent or so of fiends have what we could recognize as intelligence beyond an animal level, but even they... if they feel emotions, often those emotions are only elation at fulfilling the whims of the Evil God, or frustration at failing. In fact, why they fiends wail is precisely that:

Those cries, though most humans don't know this, are wails of despair and frustration that the Evil God is once more dead. That they couldn't kill enough humans.

[transmittable]

I am. Human.

...

So they do it because it's what they feel they have to do, to act off its emotions, and please their...most important thing? Huh.

[nachetanya]

Ah, I didn't want to assume.

Yes, and for the most part, while they can develop more complex emotions and intelligence... There have only ever been three fiends in history who developed what humans can call "empathy." The majority of fiends can feel frustration at failure, either for the Evil God or even in their own endeavors, and happiness at success. But they can't comprehend being sad that another fiend is sad. Or that another has died.

But those three fiends I just mentioned evolve empathy, somehow. And one of them realized that this way of life for the fiends is not one which can ever give them true happiness.

[transmittable]

So what do they do about it? Can they do anything about it?

[nachetanya]

Yes. All three of them devised their own "solutions," but that last one...

His name is Dozzu.

[ If the Trasmitter needed to ask, that makes it clear that she didn't know all of the things about them, or all that's mentioned on their profiles. Right now, this is a bit of a test. As "Dozzu" is listed under one of her likes on the profile. ]

[transmittable]

Dozzu...

[ There's a pause. A sound of acknowledgement. ]

...Dozzu. He's the dog, right?