Santalla

[Code Name] Santalla

[Gender] Female

[Combat Experience] 7 Years

[Place of Birth] Sami

[Date of Birth] Mar 19

[Race] Feline

[Height] 170cm

[Infection Status]

Originium crystals distributed across surface of body, confirmed Infected by medical examination.

[Physical Strength] Standard

[Mobility] Standard

[Physical Resilience] Excellent

[Tactical Acumen] Standard

[Combat Skill] Standard

[Originium Arts Assimilation] Excellent

A Sami tribal shaman, formerly in self-imposed exile. After her Oripathy symptoms were alleviated, she adopted Rhodes Island as her tribe and began a new life.

She is adept at controlling the wind and snow, and can move freely even in low-temperature environments and through storms with extremely low visibility. Those who do not understand Sami have fearfully labeled her a Witch.

Imaging tests show the indistinct outlines of internal organs, obscured by abnormal shadows. Originium granules detected in the circulatory system. The subject is confirmed to be infected with Oripathy.

[Cell-Originium Assimilation] 10%

Her left eye is severely diseased and has completely crystallized, but the organ continues to function.

[Blood Originium-Crystal Density] 0.16u/L

Oripathy infection has persisted for a long time now, and the prognosis is not very good. However, she has recently been cooperative with the treatment, and her condition has stabilized.

'Wait, did she just say she can still see through that crystallized eye?' ––Anonymous medic operator

Santalla rarely shows up at Rhodes Island, preferring to walk alongside the wood and stone of nature rather than be confined between sheets of metal. She normally operates within the borders of Sami, and is responsible for certain types of field missions in that area, such as guiding operators who aren't familiar with the region and bringing Oripathy patients from Sami to Rhodes Island for life-saving treatment. While it sounds perfectly ordinary for operators from Sami to work there, the statistics from HR show that among all our operators, those from Sami are the least willing to leave their place of birth to work in the first place. Some believe that this is an issue common to the people of Sami, particularly those from the central or northern regions. They feel uncomfortable as soon as they are separated from the environment they are accustomed to. And to a certain extent, this is true. Sami culture has too little in common with the rest of Terra, and their understanding of the lands beyond their border is confined to what they've gleaned through trade with Ursus and Columbia. After being exposed to the outside for the first time, only to have everything they have ever known completely subverted by living there, it is quite natural to want to quit and return home to work in Sami. Santalla also understands this, which is why whenever she is stationed on the landship, she can usually be found attending classes with the children. While others scribble in their notebooks, she makes etchings into a wooden board. She rarely speaks—which can come off as quiet and calming—but in reality, she simply doesn't want to call unnecessary attention to her Sami accent. In other words, she doesn't wish to speak with an accent, as she sees it as disrespectful towards other languages. Only a few have been fortunate enough to hear her speak freely, without that burden. Currently, Santalla is a caring, warm, and gentle speaker as well as listener, but fewer still know how hard-headed she was before she came to Rhodes Island, and before she became an operator.

Very few know that Santalla is the same 'Witch' who haunts the border between Sami and Ursus, causing untold headaches to the Ursine authorities. Her actions used to border on hysterical: lashing out against the Ursine people at all costs, and not even noticing the damage that Originium was doing to her body. When one of our operators happened to discover her while on a field mission in the area, she had already been unconscious in the icefield for quite some time.

Santalla never imagined that she would be rescued by an outlander, but there was no denying the obvious fact. She pledged unconditionally to repay her savior for their kindness, but the outlander—an operator of Rhodes Island—proposed that she leave Sami and come to us for Oripathy treatment.

She had never been far from Sami, and had no knowledge of the situation outside. At first she instinctively refused, but upon remembering the promise she just made, she reluctantly boarded the metallic landship along with her rescuer.

Santalla initially had a difficult time getting accustomed to life at Rhodes Island. For one thing, she was not used to living inside a steel giant. For another, the ubiquitous presence of people from Ursus made her feel instinctively threatened. Her homeland had been destroyed by an Ursus invasion, but the Ursine here greeted her as if nothing had happened. Had she not agreed to refrain from attacking them on her first day of treatment, she may well have gotten into a fight.

However, what Santalla never expected was that she would once again be able to experience the warmth of trust and friendship on this vessel of cold steel. Although her heart still sought to reject everything that was not of Sami—such was the cruelty of Ursus's violence and the prejudice of the tourists who deemed themselves superior—when she set those things aside to truly look at the various people on Rhodes Island in an objective light, she began to realize that she was no different from any of them. They were also people who could suffer, tormented by illness. They were also struggling to survive in a harsh world. They could also vent their emotions onto others because they did not understand, did not want to understand, or would even impose their own pain upon others. This kind of narrow-minded and selfish mentality was not something that she, as a Samifjod or as a shaman, should have.

So she put aside her resentment and prejudice and tried to change. Her friends took notice of her efforts, and picked a suitable time to gift her a custom-made outfit. After that, she slowly became the person we know today.

Santalla's tribe, 'Colddeath,' once existed on the border between Sami and Ursus, in a forested area near the icefield's entrance. Due to the harsh environment, the tribe had a tradition of leaving some of their newborns behind. Santalla was originally meant to be one such abandoned child, left to be scavenged by some wild beast, but just as she was about to be thrown out into the wilderness, a gust of wind happened to blow across the branches of the tribe's old tree, catching the cloth wrapped around her. Thus, her fate of death was reversed by the dead tree. Her tribe regarded this accident as Sami's will, so they brought her back and her parents continued to raise her. When her parents lost their lives during a hunt, the tribe's Snowpriest personally took her in, teaching her the tribe's shamanic heritage as well as Originium Arts. At the time, everyone believed that when she grew up, she would become the new Snowpriest and leader of the clan.

However, things rarely go as planned, and blizzards from the north continued to ravage the forest. If they tried to cling to their land, they would suffer disaster, but if they left the old tree behind, they would become the laughingstock of Sami's tribes. Eventually, the tribe was forced to split into two: one group moved south to find another woodland more suitable for survival, while the other stayed behind to guard the old tree to the very end.

Survival trumped faith, however, and most people ultimately followed the Snowpriest and left the tree. Only Santalla and a handful of devout believers remained behind. Those who stayed built a camp around the old tree, and Santalla used her Arts to control the direction of the blizzard, guiding the wildest winds elsewhere in order to ensure the tree's safety. Her life began with this tree, and thus, she was ready to let it end with the tree as well. She had contemplated all possibilities, but what she never anticipated was for Ursus to suddenly arrive and claim the land as their own. Everyone else was slaughtered for refusing to leave or surrender, and only Santalla, who happened to be out on patrol at the time, managed to escape. When the Ursus border guards tried to encircle her, she summoned a blizzard to engulf everything. The Ursine slew her people, so she harnessed nature to do the same to them. Amidst the flurry of snow and wind, a crazed Ursus soldier impaled her eye with an Originium spike, cursing her with the pain and suffering of Oripathy. But to her and her alone, it was no more than another piece of tinder to fuel her endlessly burning rage. Since then, she started to haunt the Ursus border and hunt down all Ursine targets in sight, granting her the epithet of Witch by the people of Ursus, as well as a large bounty on her head.

And her hatred has yet to melt.

Santalla has had too many encounters with death. Her own, her parents, her friends in the tribe, the old tree itself, and even her enemies.

And there will be more death awaiting her in the future. She was born to walk alongside it.

As much as she wished to deny this fact, as much as she might struggle, such efforts were destined to be in vain.

Even when her reason was swallowed up by hatred, only then was she ready to accept that truth.

Had it not been for the help of her new friends and Rhodes Island, she may very well have continued her slaughter after waking up from the pain. Until Oripathy took her completely, until she was captured and executed by Ursine authorities, or until she herself became a 'frozen monstrosity.'

Sami's weather was so frigid, so icy, that whatever warmth remaining in her heart was carried away by the wind, turning her into a block of ice that knew nothing other than to cast her cold gaze upon others.

So, when Santalla saw Amiya smiling amicably as she shook hands with her, when the children next to her asked her about the meaning of certain words, or when she was offered candy sweeter than honey from the hands of others––

When she once again carves out foldartals for others, or finishes sipping all the wine in her glass, or falls asleep without any worries...

When her passion for living melted through the ice, she was finally able to understand that it was not death that followed her, but rather, her past.

It, too, had experienced the warmth of life, but unfortunately, light and warmth cannot persist on this land forever.

As such, it turned into memories and symbols, remaining only upon wood and paper.

What it wished to leave behind was not the pain and regret of loss. On the contrary, it yearned to rediscover the warmth and beauty of the past.

And now, Santalla's eyes are open, and she will continue living the same way.

Because the past is the present and the future.

Santalla's crystallized eye is a malediction placed upon her by an Ursine.

She originally thought that the Originium spike that punctured her eye would kill her, or at least completely rob her of her vision in that eye.

But neither happened.

The crystals gradually came together and formed a new eye.

Of course, the land seen through that eye is something altogether different and alien.

Whatever appears before that eye, living or dead, emits information about everything except its appearance.

All the time, without exception.

The training she received as a shaman had taught her to look beyond appearances. However, what her new eye did was not a more comprehensive form of observation–

But rather, reception.

Of information convoluted, complex, and endless.

After conversing with the highest ranking member of the Medical Department, Dr. Kal'tsit, the latter provided her with a way of dealing with the problem.

Originium does not simply multiply endlessly until it destroys the body.

Sometimes, it assimilates the organ, completely crystallizing it but retaining its original function. But this transformation often places a heavy burden on the brain.

Kal'tsit offered two solutions.

First, render it ineffective through the regular injection of drugs, a process not significantly different from using medication to inhibit the growth of Oripathy.

Second, use Arts to organize the overflow of disordered information to allow the brain—ie: the body's information processing terminal—to ignore, filter, and finally adapt to the redundant information sent by the Originium organ.

Ultimately, Santalla decided on the second option.

She still remembers that sense of paradoxical understanding she felt when her eye saw those foldartals, that old tree, and those demons.

If it could truly elucidate Sami, understand the demons, or even comprehend the entirety of this land...

Then, would Sami's dilemma finally be resolved?

The Originium eye continues to receive information from the outside world.

But there are no answers to be found there.