Rafe wrote: ↑Sat Apr 08, 2023 12:35 am
What scares me is Natani says "The link... The mindscape ...It's gone!"
Last time, Natani still had a mindscape, which is how she communicated with her younger self. She also had some access to see (but not contact) the outside world. This isn't the same. Natani has been literally plunged into darkness and nothingness ...alone. To be held in total isolation, with no sensory input, not even Clovis' voice to torment her, sounds horrifying. Clovis has, for all practical purposes, just sent Natani to Hell. Even the artwork shows her falling into blackness.
Natani may still have a soul, and may still "exist" in some way, but isolated in nothingness like that with nothing to hear or talk to, I wouldn't give any chance that she could last any amount of time. It would surely damage her mentally to be left that way, even a short time. Death would come soon enough, and probably be welcomed.
I'll have to disagree with you there. From what we've seen of Nat, Zen and Youngtani in the mindscape thus far, it's almost like it's a separate environment entirely; not actually
IN one mind or another. They can see and interact with each other's forms, be they souls or mental images or what-have-you, but as far as environments go, I don't think that was actually a part of
either of them.
If we look back to
here, Natani was influenced by the real world, but woke up in a bed on the ship before realizing he was in the mindscape the whole time. And for all we know,
SHE was there the whole time. Given that, and what we see of the mindscape's behavior, I highly doubt Natani would end up stuck in a vast empty nothingness with the link gone, but at worst, would simply end up unconscious. That said,
this and
this. Last time, there was a flash of runes, and Natani only had time to react, not reflect on what the heck happened, before going completely comatose.
This time's different. Natani is fully conscious and aware of what's happening, with enough time and focus to analyze what's actually going on. This leads me to think of the mindscape as a sort of lucid dream state, or a fabricated communal environment for the sub-conscious mind.
Now, if we think of the mindscape as a separate environment contained within the link itself, as a way to manifest the souls involved to commune consciously or sub-consciously, there's no reason they would be stuck in it permanently if the link itself were destroyed; they would simply experience it disappearing with the link, and feel the sudden emptiness of no longer having it. I think
that's what's going on.
