The Xenoturbella is a marine organism with no brain, no gut, no organs of any kind.
It has one hole. Food enters through this hole. Waste exits through the same hole. It drifts along the ocean floor consuming whatever it bumps into, existing for no clear reason or purpose that scientists have ever determined. Evolution produced it and then apparently forgot about it.
Somehow, THE Living Elemental was lesser than such an existence.
The Xenoturbella at least committed to its simplicity. It never pretended to be more than a tube with ambitions limited to its next meal. THE Living Elemental reached for greatness, achieved Absolute depths at THE First Scale, accumulated authority that should have meant something, and still managed to contribute less to Observable Existence than a creature whose entire biological strategy was "have hole."
At least the Xenoturbella never disappointed anyone.
At least the Xenoturbella never failed upward into imprisonment.
