The world was a mix of uncatagorized sensations. He had been tackled and pinned by a heavy weight, head spinning from its rap upon the ground. The greatsword pressed against his spine like an iron log. An arm that was the translucent yellow of dried poppies shoved itself against his throat; in the swimming of his vision, Auron thought he could make out the pulse of green veins just beneath the skin.
The one irregularity with the attack was that the beast on his chest smelled like freshly cut roses.
The guards had been correct to call the thing carrion. As if it had molted layers of skin with each progression away from human form, the creature's head was pursed into ridges. A rounded crest extended back from its forehead like merged horns of the mountain goats. The slipperiness of the carapace foiled Auron's attempt to grab for a hold to push the fiend away. When his hand slid down across its face, it bit him.
His bellow of pain drew the villagers out from the huts, many of them with torches and even more with weapons. The fiend worried its jaws from side to side like a dog with a particularly tough steak. The world blurred back into darkness and stars as Auron felt the muscles in his hand begin to rip.
"Blind it!" One woman was screaming, and then the creature upon him jerked when a spear came lashing towards them both. The design of its skull caused the point to glance off at an angle. Auron threw his head to the side as he saw the metal turn, and the spear embedded itself in the ground next to his shoulder.
Yanking its neck back triumphantly, the fiend tore the meat in its teeth free at last, and Auron's palm sputtered blood through the white of exposed bone. In that moment, the creature's weight was off-center; Auron swung his other hand up in a hook he had not used since the monastery, and landed it squarely in the beast's concave chest.
The impact was as good as useless.
Slamming one of its palms upon the guardian's cheek and sending Auron's skull crashing back against the dirt, the fiend tightened its fingers and raked what had once been nails down his face. Auron's feet spasmed as one talon caught in the vulnerability of his eye. Like a child playing with the soft underbelly of a hedgehog, the fiend wriggled its claw in the socket and then plucked its finger free to rear back once more.
Needle teeth grinned. Strings of flesh from Auron's hand were still hanging from its mouth, and it twitched its chin to lick a strip into its mouth with a thin tongue. Then came the roar when a sentry plowed into its side to knock it away from the guardian, sliding off in a clacking of limbs that left Auron's legs stinging where it had clawed him.
The guards from the perimeter of the village had finally rushed in to aid against the assault. Only six in total, Auron realized, with a sinking in his chest that made him wonder if that meant only six more fiends when the night was done. Two had taken up a defense in front of him. The man who had been reckless enough to try and tackle the fiend directly was trying to back away as carefully as he could, but one arm dangled loose at his side like the melting stems of voluceau hung at the southern gate.
Auron's right hand refused to respond when he ordered it to close properly upon the hilt of his sword.
Now that he had a better view of it, Auron could see that the fiend had mutated away from a bipedal shape. Its body was spindly, long, limbs bending on extra joints as it crouched back and waited for an opening to attack. The skin left on its skeleton was stretched like improperly tanned leather, spotted in places and cracking. Only its massive head was fully formed into that of a monster. Its chin was painted with Auron's blood as it grinned with a mouth wide enough to snap up a babe whole, but its eyes were far too bright when the guardian found it meeting his gaze. The sentience that remained glittering there twisted Auron's throat.
Will alone drove the guardian's hands to grip the greatsword, bringing it up to a ready stance on his shoulder. He compensated by sinking his balance deeper in both legs as he had been taught. It was harder to sight upon the beast with only one eye, but Auron ignored this, thrusting his shoulders forward to convince his body to follow.
The posture collapsed in a rush. The greatsword carried itself to its target, rising in a lazy arc that dragged his arms with it. Double-handed it came cleaving down; it met a resistance as thick as spider's silk to its mass, and then plowed into the dirt. Auron stumbled along helplessly behind. Something round and spongy rolled underneath his foot. He heard a screech rise nearby to a peak before it receded.
The jaundiced creature had sprung away past the reach of the torches. It gibbered in pain as it scuttled. The arm that had been severed from it twitched erratically upon the ground before dissolving into the lights of pyreflies.
The guardian felt his weight swaying on his feet. Charissma petals were pasting his eye shut, ruby satin covering his face like a shroud. Hands had rushed to him, touching him all over as voices chirped concern, and then Auron was sinking to the ground. The sword kept him upright enough to kneel. He held fast to it, and the cold metal blessed his face with relief.
Poppy. Hawthorn, Fern.
The sunset was the color of the tapioca puddings that Luca would sell during blitzball games, and the nubbled clouds gave it the same texture.
The villagers had been grateful for his assistance. They were practical to a fault. It was phrased in roundabout tact to the guardian that they would appreciate his continued presence for as long as the menace persisted, but that they recognized that his physical loss might urge him to leave.
No one wished to speak the crafter's name aloud out of the same pragmatic politeness. All cast glances at the memorial. When Celsia began to claim nightmares, they placed a guard upon her hut as well.
Auron had seen them while he had been escorted to the local healer. It would have been impossible not to notice the building the girl was kept at, covered in wreaths like a companion mound to her father. The guardian was not certain if this meant she was being treated like one already dead.
An informal tour of the village had shown him the rest of the village's story. They were potters and weavers to a point, but the true strength of Cornel lay in their talents of coaxing blossoms from the nutrient-starved soil of the mountains. Scraggled heather could flourish underneath their journeymens' hands. Even the most frail leaves could unfurl in rocky earth so long as they were attended to by Cornel's people, who still lost more seeds than they managed to grow.
Despite their isolation, even the people of Cornel could not fully escape the grip of Spira. They took enough pride to fuel their own survival from their ability to adorn death. Now, as danger threatened, they responded in the only way they knew how. Spira's rule of morality was absolute. They would continue to import hundreds of sprouts, and write off their losses as natural fact.
The morbidly festive air was becoming steadily more grating upon Auron's nerves, but he suspected that he was coming to understand it.
The air in the room that had been cleaned out for him was still choked with dust. The woman apologized profusely as she tried to tidy. Auron shook his head and winced as the motion drove lances of fire through his brain. Enough amenities had been provided in the hut that he would not be inconvenienced. It had taken a great deal of work to convince the healer--a thorn-tough man in his seventies who wore suspicion with ease--that Auron had not desired more than a few stitches to abet the worst of the bleeding. The guardian was still wary around those who knew the craft of life. He had managed to blame it on the pain.
Strings of faded color were abundant even in the storage hut. The garlands of old were kept in boxes wherever there was a free place, and now they overflowed in testament to the years the villagers had seen. No ghosts lingered on the funeral lilies. Only Auron stirred the air, crushing the husks of dried daisies beneath his feet.
The guardian unslung his sword and set it upon the cot, where its weight puckered the sheets inwards. Auron had attended to the ichor on his blade first. Shaking away the helping hands who tried to part him from his weapon, the man had methodically cleaned the stain from the metal until he was satisfied that there were no remnants behind. The habit was one of many taught from experience. His clothing could always be washed later, but metal could pit and later corrode.
He let the sword wait for him on the bed while he tended to cleaning the rest now.
There was no running water in the hut, but whoever had prepared the room had thought to bring a fresh washbasin, placing it on the table below the mirror already hung here. Absently, the guardian turned the glass towards him while he peeled the well-meaning gauze dressings away from his face. The cut it must be healing cruelly by the feel of it; the nerves were refusing to even register pain.
The necklaces of flowers strung from the ceiling were wavy lines of color. Dust obscured his reflection, and Auron frowned, closing an eye to focus on the mirror better as he rubbed the grit away with a palm.
Then he opened it again.
Both eyes looked back.
When his unbelieving glove touched the surface of the formerly damaged orb, the guardian flinched automatically at the foreign sensation. Terrified at the thought of someone walking in on him, Auron pulled his gloves off and threw them against the edge of the table. He only realized that it should have hurt to do so when he saw the white brand of the bandages on his right hand, and noticed that they were still pristine. When he ripped the layers off, the skin underneath was as smooth as the day he had died.
His face bore no mark of the attack.
Someone will see this and suspect, his mind screamed in panic, and then they will start to wonder. What had happened to his wound when they had all seen him injured? Nothing living healed so quickly. Only fiends.
Making a quick decision, Auron flipped through the supplies in the room. His travel pack was lighter than a normal man's should be. Food and drink were secondary to him now, and even the cold had started to affect him less and less. It was a strange evolution into strength. It had not worried him until now.
The short knife he carried for the road came easily to his hand, and he did not hesitate to swing back towards the mirror and draw the knife in a quick motion down his face.
At the renewal of agony, the guardian's fingers loosened around the blade and clapped themselves to the damaged side. Instinct pestered him to stop. His face was pale in the mirror and he took his hand away gingerly, wanting to see the injury at its worst and still hoping that it would not be as bad as it could be.
The new mark did not resemble the initial wound, and he thought to make a second pass even as the idea of more pain turned his will weak. The important part was the eye itself--if it remained working, the villagers would suspect.
But the gush of fluid stopped as he watched, obeying the betrayal in his heart that wanted to keep his body intact. Blurry vision reformed into clear. As the pyreflies began to flicker into being around him, seeping back into the slash to heal the damage, Auron grit his teeth, and plunged his fingertips into the corners of the socket.
Plucking his own eye out was easier than he thought when it came down to basic motions. It felt ridiculously like a wet marble. The hard part was not screaming or vomiting, and Auron succeeded at that, save for the keen that had begun to crawl out his throat and claw at his teeth to be freed. His jaw creaked. If he relaxed his mouth a single inch, he would scream himself dry.
The twined threads of the optic nerve resisted as his fingers slipped and scrabbled for grip without trying to actually touch it, and then finally snapped. It hurt far less than he thought it should. He was not sure why the observation turned his stomach over. The room was as warm as a dream, and sparks floated up from his fingers as the eye lost cohesive form. Light circled the guardian. He refused to accept the distant pain, and instead exchanged it for a feverish wonder.
He had done it wrong, he realized. By not pulling at the nerve itself, he had broken the connection at the eye rather than from his head. The nerve draped down his cheek like cooling lace.
Giddy thought suggested to the guardian that he could allow himself to heal, and then try again until he managed to get it right. Then reality tried to intrude, along with a choking sound as Auron could not decide if he should continue to try to pull out the remnants of the thin cord trailing from the hollow or if he should just coil it back up and tuck it into the opening like a sachet in a drawer. He tried to stretch it out and shuddered at the pain. The reflection of his face in the mirror jiggled and laughed as the guardian tried to bring the knife to bear upon the strands and failed.
For a sick moment, Auron found himself seriously considering jamming a tiger lily into the opening. He could carry on normal conversation the next day and then forget to keep the lid closed--perhaps he would accidentally blink--and all would scream at the sight of pollen and pistil rooted in his head, petals twice spotted with gore. He could rub the socket clean with white violets that would resemble curdled maggots when he was done.
The edges of the major wound itself were closing up underneath his fingers as he watched, and he tried to claw at it to keep it open, holding desperately at the ragged gumming of the edges while it slipped away. Clots of tissue built up under his nails as he sought a grip and failed.
The scream that should have broken loose only slipped free as a dry laugh. Nothing about the act was real enough. The sensations of his body were becoming more and more distant as Auron continued to ignore them. Taking up the knife, he dragged the blade down once, twice, decided with an artist's musing that the eyelid did not have the same look when there was nothing in the socket to fill it out properly, and went for a third time that almost tore the thin flap of flesh completely in two.
Bile receded from his throat. Auron knew it should burn at the back of his mouth and urge him to retch, that the knife should dig hot fire into his muscles. All that came when he panted, open-mouthed over the basin, was a strained chuckle that sounded like no voice the guardian ever used as his own.
Auron realized then that the lights in his vision were pyreflies swarming, and that his reflection in the glass was becoming distorted.
Why bother keeping to a body so fragile, when you could choose a freedom in death?
What was happening to him had also trapped Joshua. When given the option of ignoring the restrictions of a human body, the craftsman had accepted. Joshua had not cared for the appearance he had given up in exchange for not needing to eat or drink, or be wounded. And why bother being frail? The thoughts hissed in Auron's mind. Why not allow the pyreflies to shape you into power?
Why remember being human?
Moving the knife to his left hand, Auron fixed the image of his right firmly in mind before he drove the blade into it, spearing the palm through the tendons to let it squirm like a fish. He did not let himself look away.
The sudden pain drove his stomach to finally clench, and the remnants of the dinner he had forced down began to bubble. Auron's free hand slipped on the edge of the basin when he leaned too hard upon it. Fighting to keep the memory of nausea strong, bright sparks exploding in the nerves of both eyes now--missing and present--Auron tried to trace the balance between life and death as carefully as that of sea and land.
Blood covered his face. It had spattered over the washbasin and the mirror; the white trim of his coat was dark from the layers of crimson dye it had received. There was not enough water to clean it all away. Grabbing up the bottom of his coat, Auron tried to wipe up the mess and only succeeded in smearing it in desperate circles.
It took use of the entire garment to remove the evidence. The guardian yanked his jacket free, unbuckling the wide belt with clumsy fingers, and worked from wall to floor like a scrubber. He could not be brought back to the healer. He could not afford to be discovered. The dark stain on the ground where his blood had soaked into the soil was an accusation which mocked him, and Auron dropped his coat upon it to hide the mark. He bunched it in his hands and rubbed furiously before he realized that he was only working dirt into the fabric he would have to wear tomorrow, or go bare-armed in the mountain air.
Fear was a familiar stone in his belly as he realized that he was not cold.
Auron brought a knee to his chest and sat there, hunched, as he fought to remember himself as a blind man until dawn.