taxonomites | 01 | Holo/Location: The Sanctuary

"I wish to do more violence."

Blood. She would drench herself in it. Bathe in it. Wear it like a suit of armor. It would fall from the skies as the rain fell--in torrents.

Wesley was dead. He was just a human, nothing, and yet . . .She felt anger for his death, and his loss was an unfamiliar weight she had no will to bear. Blood was all she thirsted for, and if it would not ease this accursed mortal feeling of despair, then she would pile heads upon heads of these creatures until she could sit upon their mutilated corpses like a king, once again. King.

The half-breeds and the human would die. Only she would live on.

She.

But then the world blinked, and suddenly the air reeked of cold metal and silence. Water dripped from the ends of her hair to the floor, but elsewhere the room was dry. Space was no longer wide but insufferably small, no longer loud with the songs of battle, but utterly without sound. The half-breeds and their human warrior were gone. Illyria was alone.

"What is this magic?"

Her frozen, blue eyes roamed the empty room, taking in its strange accoutrements. Her body remained as it was before the blink--a statue, still and deaf to all who looked upon her. The wolf, The Ram, The Hart. Only they possessed the power to pluck her from time and space. They were fools.

"Treacherous. To think this sorcery will prevent your undoing." Nothing, but silence. Baring her teeth and clenching her jaw, she spoke calmly, lowly, and dangerously. "Speak," she commanded. "And your deaths will be bearable."

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"Fools," she says, barely a whisper. The Wolf, Ram, and Hart--they possessed the sorcery to construct this fabrication. They wished to wage war against the half-breed without her aid. They would deprive her of her victory. She would return in kind their insolence with destruction.

She tilts her head at the girl, taking one large step forward. "This room...does not suit me. You will tell me how to be rid of it." A command.

Kaylee, figuring that Illyria meant the aliens and not someone from her own world, nodded in agreement. "Considerin' they run around looking like hamsters half the time, I ain't gonna disagree."

Sometimes she forgot how pushy people could be at first. Internally, Kaylee grimaced at the order, but her face remained as helpful and supportive as she could maintain. "Just pick up the tablet--that's the thing we're speaking through. Door should open. You'll have to take the tablet with you when you go, but then just follow the hallway down, take the stairs, and you'll find yourself in a lobby of sorts."

"Rodents," she spits. "Usurpers nibbling and clawing their way above their betters." How it is they came to control this world...she could not understand.

But she is not in this world. She is in another. "They have stripped me of my cage and tossed me in another." Illyria looks at her wrist, curiously, the little metal clasp gleaming in the light. A shackle.

Instead of grasping the device, she looks back at the human woman. "This world. Is it also run by humans?"

"Ain't gonna argue with you there."

Kaylee is still trying to figure out a lot about Taxon, and she is one of the ones who has been in the city the longest at this point. Not as long as Glitch and DG, but getting pretty far up there. The hamsters and their brains are still a nice big mystery.

The mechanic shakes her head. "Not humans, no. Some kind of aliens, though we don't know what they look like. Well, we do, but... They like to run around as hamsters or imitations of humans."

Illyria does not understand; nor does she care to. Her captors would reap the consequences of her captivity, whether they be beast or human.

She draws her eyes away from the human and to the thick metal that surrounds her. "This attempt to withhold me from my true purpose offends me. I shall find these creatures and wear their innards as jewels." A pause, as she notices the alter once again. There. She removes this device from its holder. That's how this cage opens.

As she grasps it, the exit appears. "Human. What lies outside this door?"

Kaylee does her best not to shake her head. Everyone who has been in Taxon has made similar threats at one point or another, but they haven't been able to keep hold of one for more than a few hours.

"If you can manage it you'll impress a good number of us."

She waves to the work shop around her. "A city. Whole city, inside a cave--don't let the sky fool ya, it's fake. Outside that door in-particular is the central building of the city. We all arrived there when we showed up, and there're rooms 'n things there that you can stay in for a time. Most prefer to take up a place of their own, though. There're people, too. Some're like us--" she holds up her bracelet "--and others are like a set of robots that're programmed into the system. Don't do much at all 'cept take up space."

"I have no desire to win favor with others," she states, coldly, eying the exit.

More rooms, more walls, more places too small to breathe in. And worse--its walls were fabricated. Synthetic. Deceiving. Is she forced once again to walk in a world so different from her own, overrun by humans and...hamsters, with no guide to aid her?

Wesley. The memory of his death was still fresh, and her yet unclaimed vengeance hung upon her like a swollen cloud whose rain had not yet fallen. She wished for violence to alleviate its burden.

"Robots. What demon is this?"

"Don't matter whether you want it or not, you'll have full support."

She'll probably say something wrong at this point, telling it plainly like this, but Kaylee doesn't care. If somebody can get riled for a bit maybe it'll wake everybody else back up. Sitting here waiting for hamsters to glitch them has gotten pretty old.

And Illyria doesn't know what robots are, right. "Robots're machines created to help humans out. Can be anythin' from a motorized vacuum cleaner to something that looks and functions as close to human as they can get. The Extras're closer to the second. Look like people, function where people might, but there's no personality to 'em. There's...almost nothin' to 'em at all, really."

"They are slaves to humans," Illyria says, contempt dripping from her blue lips. "Ants prey to the fancies of larger ants. Deplorable."

It offends her, enrages her, that someone has saw fit to bind her here. "This is no place for a god."

Ray of sunshine. Kaylee is beginning to wonder how she could have forgotten just how...brash Illyria can be.

"Ain't a place for anyone," she replies, with a hastily added, "especially a god. 'Fraid it don't get much better after you been here a time, neither."

Illyria looks away from the image of the human, back to her refection in the steel walls.

"Such is not limited to this world."

01 | Holo/Location: The Sanctuary | Shaper of Things

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