This story was pretty much born from a rather intersting conversation I had with Zel, where Auron and Seymour had a lovechild called Seymouron... it caught on, actually, and now Teg has an imaginary plushie of him. I finally finished the first chapter. I did it, Teg!
Seymour looked out onto the people below him as he stood on his balcony in the large house he and Auron shared. The shouts and conversations of the other people drifted up to him, and he soaked them in, like a plant absorbing water. There was the pungeant smell of fruits and vegetables, and he inhaled them deeply, grateful for his newly returned sense of smell.
When he had first come here, he didn't have any of his senses. He had stumbled blindly around for a few seconds, until he felt himself being restrained and fed every so often. He didn't taste the food he was given, and could only feel what was happening in a very general way. The first sense that had come back to him was sight, and the first face he had seen was Auron's. Auron had been standing guard over him, the only one deemed strong enough of the newly Sent to restrain Seymour.
They were in a small holding cell, and Seymour was tied to a chair, looking up at the guardian, and beyond him dark grey walls and ceiling. It all looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn't quite place it. In fact, he couldn't remember how he knew Auron either, but they had definitely met.
He saw Auron mouthing something, but couldn't hear it, still being deaf. They communicated clumsily by gestures for a few moments while Auron determined if he was sane or not, and then Auron had sent for someone skilled in communicating with the deaf. Seymour had known this because the interpreter had explained as much, by clever hand motions.
At first it had been normal, as if he had been deaf, mute and otherwiseinsensitized his entire life. Yet occasionally memories of his past life would drift back to him, not enough to satisfy him, but enough to tease him almost beyond redemption. After a few months he could hear, though speaking was still beyond him. He learned from Auron that the ex-guardian was only a little ahead of him, and had in fact still been deaf when he was guarding Seymour. He still didn't have his sense of taste, touch, smell, his hearing was bad, and he couldn't remember how to read, but they managed to communicate anyway.
For a half a year they spoke in their odd way, with Auron speaking and Seymour using basic sign language he had learned from the interpreter. It was quite frustrating for Seymour to try to get across advanced concepts, such as where he was, or what they were all doing here, and Auron was intelligent, but not that intelligent.
After those months of tedious, frustrating communication, Seymour regained his voice. It sounded silky and smooth, as it always had when he was real. How he knew that he wasn't sure, but in all the flashbacks he had his voice sounding convincing and sympathetic, just like a leader's.
He found that Auron knew no more of what was going on here, or where here was, than Seymour did. They stayed up many long nights, until the early hours of the morning, theorizing on how they had gotten here, but they didn't have much to go on, both only having scattered memories.
One person that they both had memories of was a woman, a delicate-looking brunette who spoke softly and seemed to glide across the ground. She had very elegant clothes and a staff that looked much like Seymour's, but more feminine and slender. They agreed on the fact that she was a Summoner, but neither could quite remember what that was. They took to calling her Alisa, by mutual consent, although neither Seymour nor Auron was quite sure where the name had come from.
Arguments from the people below him brought Seymour out of his reveire, and he headed back into the house. It was large enough for three people easily, but it was just himself and Auron here. They had been granted this house to themselves because they had been important people in Spira, and that was greatly respected here.
Seymour walked into the exguardian's room, and stood against the doorframe, watching Auron work on his sword, his famous katana. The sharpening block was making a horrible sound, but Seymour was quite used to it, having heard Auron sharpen his sword many times. He walked up behind Auron and put a hand on his shoulder.
"Auron." He said, loud enough to be heard over the grinding. "Auron it's time."
He looked up from his sword, and stopped for the moment. "Is it that time already?" Auron asked, and he stood up ramrod straight,to lookSeymour in the eye, being only slightly shorter than him.
"Yes."Seymour answered simply,thenremovedhis hand awkwardly and turned to walk into the main hall of the house. He took out his staff, the only thing he wished to take with him to the next level. He heard Auron walk into the hall likewise, and the two stood silently, waiting to be transferred.
Existance here was quite odd compared to Spiran life, but neither of them had remembered enough about their former lives to know that. Every year or so you were transferred to a different plane, depending on how well you had regained your senses and memories. According to the others that they had met here, people tended to leave after getting their hearing and vocal abilities back, and they could feel it when they were about to leave.
There were many myths about the next plane, but no real way of confirming or disproving them, because no one that had passes on ever came back, unless they fought their existance here, and even then when they came back they remembered nothing about the other planes. It was a general topic of discussion here, and even if you had nothing in common with someone you were talking to, you could start discussing that.
Auron's thoughts roamed to the man standing near him, waiting for the same thing he was. How had Seymour felt the minute vibrations in both their beings that indicated they were to leave, when Auron himself had been blissfully unaware, lost in his own musings as he sharpened his sword. And what did he have that Auron didn't, for them to be sent at the same time to the next plane, instead of Auron, who had been there a month or so longer, being sent first?
They waited, each wrapped up in their own thoughts, when suddenly something immaterial grabbed onto them both, pulling them who knew where. When they arrived, they were greeted by a giant fiend, which looked down at them hungrily.
It had two horns and stood erect, with thick matted fur and a thick protusion of hair on it's chin that looked like a beard.
"A Behemoth." Auron muttered, dredging up the name from somewhere. He pulled his arm out of his sleeve and prepared to fight, seeing Seymour ready his staff. Auron charged the thing, and heard Seymour start the incantation to Blizzara.