The Blighted
The First Breath of a child had always been sacred to them. The first thought is less so, but still significant. The frightful truth of the matter was that all Eoni, or Kindreds as they had come to be known, were also capable of great evils. All species are, but this was in such a manner it continued to bleed between our reality, and a twisted fiction the Gai-freed crafted ages before.
Consider all evils, the twisted, the dark, the greys. The guilt, the complicity of crimes, and mixed with a strange and agonized pain that yowls like the deep wolves of the forests. Those are what cautiously craft the Eoni's starved states. The souls' wealth of experience, enrichment in goodness, in joy, in a vastness of experiences, both good and evil and all things in-between, are what sates the deep anguish that the Eoni are born under.
Nowadays we know it to be a corruption of the code that creates the Eoni in this digital landscape, that we are simply creatures born from the fountain of knowledge that none had foreseen. However, it does not make it any less painful.
The Blighted, or once called demons, by humans in the Outer World, hunt when called. Their names never spoken, it draws them to their prey. They take refuge in the moonless nights, calling for those who feel too much and understand too little, beckoning them to whistle, to call and pinpoint where their soul stretches out so the Blighted can eviscerate what little soul they have.
That is what my mother, Sarothi, said, at least. She knows well what it is like, trapped, starved and yearning to be herself again. She's seen how it reacts to the body like a sickness, stealing away strength in favor of desperation.
"Think of it as always being tormented, so close to what you cannot eat, and being punished for it."
Any can fall to the Blight, Eoni are not special. She explained that the Blight exists in all things. Eonigia has verified.
"It turns our dragons savage, kills our islands in favor of low-surface riches, and creates a greed and jealousy in others that steals away their joy and their soul. Their bodies do not show it, but their hearts know the Blight. Slowly, it kills them, slowly, it isolates them from all that they know, until they wake, and find there is nothing and no one left for them."
But I had to ask, how did this all start? Why did we separate from the Blighted instead of helping them? They are capable of changing back! Everyone knows this!
Eonigia told me this common myth of how the Blighted began.
The Origin Myth
Breathe. That had been the order, the understanding. The small child exhaled. Their soft gaze landed upon their mother, who cradled them close. Those bright, brilliant blue eyes finding the birthmark on their mother's cheek.
The tiny, pudgy hands that reached up to greet their mother couldn't have brought her any more joy. Or any joy. The unfortunate fact is that their mother, whom we'll call Ichisei ("eech-e-sigh"), had been starved. The Blight had tarnished and eaten up any joy she could have felt seeing the small infant asleep against her chest.
The infant's father, Ochoko, ("oh-chi-ko") could not be more elated seeing the precious life he and his wife had created. A deep pride welled in his chest when he saw his precious daughter.
"Azeria," He was breathless. Ichisei nodded, mute, expressionless. There were so many feelings Ichisei knew she wasn't feeling, she was acutely aware of how distant this whole ordeal felt to her.
That tiny soul glittered in her eye, and all she could think of was how... Hungry, she was. That tiny soul looked so delicious, so tantalizingly ripe, like a fresh batch of strawberries.
She hadn't felt her proboscis moving, she hadn't realized— But Ochoko was watching in horror, yanking Azeria away from her mother with a gentle yet panicked force.
"Ichisei stop! Stop it— STOP YOU'RE KILLING HER!"
Blood had stained her hands, yet Ichisei did not feel sated. Her hunger only grew, and that distance only grew. Azeria could only cry, pained and scared, as her father cradled her close. Ochoko's whole body was trembling as he held the bleeding infant. Ichisei's proboscis hadn't pierced fully through her chest, but it was obvious that it had hit its mark. Azeria had a puncture wound in her chest the size of her pinky nail.
Ichisei couldn't shake her hunger to realize, instead moving to stand. Lumbering limbs that stretched far beyond her torso moved with little grace, and she approached, her features fading to bone around her face. Blackened saliva dripped from her teeth as she opened her maw. She needed to feed. On anything that would fill the void forming in her stomach.
Ochoko would flee, of course he would, into the night, a hand pressed against his infant daughter's chest to stem the bleeding in her chest. This would be the first time anyone had any reason to fear the Blighted. He ran as fast as his body would carry him, but what was left of Ichisei would quickly catch up. Her frightening speed allowed her to overtake Ochoko..
And by the morning, daylight glittered on bleached white bones, both of a man, and of an infant, their souls tormented in the belly of a thoughtless, and soulless beast. A creature that only sought to feed, to eat any and every last part it could stomach, and leave the bones of its prey as a twisted thanks for their lives.
Upon discovery, they were checked, and their forms had been so deeply corrupted before their deaths, twisted, mangled beyond recognition, before being placed carefully back into a familiar sight. The breaks and fractures made themselves apparent when the burial was attempted, as both bodies became nothing more than broken fragments, each breastbone breaking precisely around a small hole, punctured by something no bigger than a nail.
The flocks of Eoni would whisper to one another from there, that the tragedy of Ochoko and his daughter, who they had believed was unnamed, was because of Ichisei's Blighted state. Soon, this fear would corrupt the flock, and they would push away and push out those who had turned, for if one was capable of destroying all that they had loved, what was to keep the others from doing the same?
Rumours spread that their hunger was insatiable, that they could not be saved, as fewer and fewer shifted back. Fewer and fewer stayed with their families once they turned, a deep shame coming into the mix once they had turned Blighted.
We now understand this to be a symptom of coding errors, wherein the satisfaction of one's hunger is negated once they turn, but it is still treated as something to be feared. Code can be corrected, it can be fixed! It's just a matter of keeping them still enough to fix the issue..
Coding and data transfers act like magic here, specific effects for specific actions, rituals, elements and issues. Eoni aren't any different to elementals or any mythical creatures present in this digital landscape.
Yet this problem of corrupted code is ours. The first order is Breath, yes, but the second order is Eat. Failure to fulfill that second order is to feel like we're dying. It's a rarity now to hear how Ichisei felt, what little of her awareness must have mourned the atrocity she had committed against her own family.
Eonigia refuses to talk about the details, and Sarothi was the same way. Neither would speak of the events outside of what had been taught for decades. Was she scared? Would she have cried? If she could have had better help in that moment, if she had more to eat that day, would it have been avoided entirely? It's impossible to say, impossible to know.
I did find a journal from the era, detailing some of the rumours that spread at that time. There was no pity, no remorse, and no compassion for those who had changed once it came to light that they were capable of harming those they had once loved. Entry after entry reads nearly the same..
"(a name is scratched out here) shifted today, they have been banished to the far side of the island, out by the volcano..May the dormant den bubble forth and make for their deaths."
"The families of the most recent Blighted are mourning, as if they are dead. The Blight is a fate worse than that, they should know. They take solace in one another, that we are thankful for. It keeps more from shifting, we found."
"Another skeleton has been found, may their souls find peace in the End. May their killers be forever tormented. Especially those who killed the children."
It's a lot to go through, the Blight was the biggest threat for such a small population, and it still is. The reports today on the matter reflect the same problems, the same anxieties. I wonder how much of that was influenced by these past stories, and the changes that were made in light of the horror stories that were spread through our clans.
The countless records, the countless stories of the Blighted coming in, taking what they need to eat, and only leaving the bleached-white bones behind is a horrifying thought. It paints Eoni who shift as savages, worse than the dragons who eat the bones of their prey. The thought occurred to me that it would be wise one day to simply bring an offering to a Blighted being, and ask their thoughts.
They did not reject me.
"Child, understand this; Blighted have every right to exist as they are as anyone else. It is not our fault for what we need to survive another day, but the fault of others for threatening the greater harm of death. Many of us do attempt to revert on our own, and some are as savage as the stories tell. The experience has been both enlightening and torturous on many, allowing us to see further than ourselves, while making us unable to feel what we know to be ours. Offerings will make no difference in the end, and the support we once sought will no longer be offered so long as fear remains. Division is what united the remainder of Eoni to ensure their safety, and henceforth will be maintained. So long as they are not like us, they have no reason to turn on one another."
I want to say I understood what they meant by that, that Division sowed our unity as a species and made sure of our survival, but it's still lost on me. Why would pushing away our most vulnerable, those most in pain, make us stronger as a species? Doesn't it make us just as cruel as any other?
"You would think so, but in truth, Blighted are not as vulnerable and weak as you perceive. We can handle who we are, what we are, on our own merits. Weakness only comes when our packs separate, when we sow division within our groups to gain more than we ought."
"Are you saying that in being divided, we fasten the bonds between ourselves and those we're similar to?"
"Are you suggesting it would be better to live amongst those who other you and see you as weak simply because you are not like them?"
They have a point, I suppose. Pitying them doesn't change what they are, and they seem to have their own clans to work with, to grow within and survive together in. But are bonds really that strong to keep the Blighted from harming one another, compared to the bonds they once had with their original clans?
