[Sarah]

xxxTaken
─────────────────── [ #0a0f25 ] ─

The creature twitched violently. It hissed in pain. Remaining still was achieved only in that the thing did not move any great directional length. Its body seemed to shift through space in a way that suggested it was not wholly in Evelon. The jerking movements were both real and unreal. Sometimes its body did move swiftly and painfully. Other times its body phased through space into that other dimension.

[Sarah]

Either movement was no less painful than the other. The ambient noises of the forest did little to hide the hissing and moaning of the Taken being.

Oryx’s plight was never meant to go further than the Destined realm. This unholy magic was never meant to breach its tendrils into another universe.

[Sarah]

For now the consequences and suffering remained unseen. Without their king to give them purpose those that had been Taken here wandered thoughtlessly. They could feel each other in that other unknowable dimension. Could they think they might gather. Could they gain purpose they might truly wreak havoc upon this world.

[Sarah]

As it was they were wanderers. They were twitchy dangerous creatures with no master. Their blight would spread as a disease among the species. The Taken plight would find champions among these species but could not go farther.

There was one. There was one in which sanity and sentience had remained. This creature had been hand-picked by Oryx to be different, and so it was.

[Sarah]

Sometimes when the threads of the other unknowable dimension drew taught they could feel this sentience. It would drive them for fleeting moments and leave behind messy broken ideas and motivation. The sentience never had enough time to take hold and all too soon the Taken were returned to their stupid aimless state.

[Sarah]

Half remembered dreams remained in this husk. Dreams that led it to Iiy'lagon, although what purpose that had driven it escaped to the unknown. The creature had found a suitable place far above the ocean. Cliffs that met with the endless water which stretched out without meaning. Suitable as it was, the Taken had no remembrance of the task at hand.

[Sarah]

In its long travels across the land it had met nothing of interest. When it had been seen nothing dared approach. Species that could have posed as foes stayed away. Even the weather had avoided the plagued thing as it made its way to the water.

Could it think it might wonder and awe at the ocean. It might have spent more time in the jungles and forests and plains and cities to marvel at creation. This world was wonderous and the Taken were wholly unfit to inhabit it.

[Sarah]

Even the quasi-sentient creatures had meaning in this land. Their ancestors having a hand in shaping the landscape and shaping the vast complex societies of the sentient. No organic being felt itself out of place in the wilderness of Evelon. To be so connected with the history of the planet was what made the Taken outcasts, unwanted, dangerous. They had no place in this world.

[Sarah]

The Taken creatures themselves were not to be blamed. Oryx, the Taken King, was to be blamed. The blight was as unthinking as the creatures themselves. Without power, without sentience, without guidance, the plague was useless. It could not even consume more than a single species as it was wanting to do. Only the strongest could survive the other terrible dark dimension, and the opportunities the blight had in hopping into a host was minuscule.

[Sarah]

Those cursed with the blight had the worst luck. They were infected with a useless, all-powerful sickness that should not exist. With no master, those that were Taken had drawn the short straw in a bushel of long straws.

So, the creature remained. A terrifying sentinel atop the cliffs. The ocean spray did not reach it, but the creature would have no done anything if it had. The wind buffeted it and sometimes there was rain, but still the creature stood, waiting for the strings of that other dimension to pull taught again.