Work Text:
Falling, falling, falling. Louis felt the wind against his body as he tumbled from the sky, his body contorting and pulling back into its regular shape as the energy that had fuelled his metamorphosis dissipated. Yet as his bones shrank, his skin contracted, and his organs moved back into place, it did not quite reassemble right - like elastic that had been pulled just a little too far, it would not quite snap back as it once was.
But Louis was only dimly aware of this, his mind flickering from the agony of both his transformation and his wounds. Though his eyes were open, all they saw was darkness, and all he could feel when sensation from his mangled body reached his brain was the burning of a thousand hot irons.
For what felt like an eternity, he plummeted, a singular raindrop in the clear blue expanse, eventually landing unceremoniously in the dirt, somewhere just outside Grand Trad. For a moment, it felt as though his entire body was shattering, and then his consciousness went out completely.
By all rights, such a fall should have killed him, even if he hadn't already been wounded. And yet he awoke.
When his eyes fluttered open, confusion overcame Louis - this was not somewhere he had ever been. Mind hazy, he tried to retrace his steps through his memories to figure out how he had ended up in this uncomfortable bed, with these scratchy sheets and mattress springs which dug into his back.
Some tiny part of his brain fought back, desperate not to remember, wanting to live in ignorance, but he ignored it. There was no point in being afraid of the past. It had already happened, and trying to hide from it meant it could not be learned from.
Then he remembered fighting. Falling.
Briefly, Louis wondered if he was in the afterlife, before his scrambled brain remembered that there was no such thing. He was awake, and thus he was alive. His first impulse was to try and sit up, but the moment he tried, every inch of his back screamed with pain. He would not be leaving this bed any time soon, that was unquestionable. Gingerly, he tested each part of his body, how much he could move, and found that there was not a single part of him that did not hurt. His legs had virtually no mobility, and though his arms fared a little better, they were still torturous to move, particularly his shoulders - his elbows were a little better, thankfully. Fingers and toes were just about all he could move without too much pain.
Louis was not supposed to be alive. Of this fact he was certain. But someone had saved him, found him hanging by a thread and pulled him from the seas of oblivion and back onto the shores of the living. But his condition certainly wasn't ideal - his vision was blurred and doubled, his head spun, and even the light coming through the gaps of the closed curtains stabbed at his eyes, and so he snapped them back shut. The only thing he could tell about the room was that the walls were a pale yellow, and that a wooden wardrobe stood by the door, at the wall opposite his head - it gave no real signs of what his saviour could be like, what their motives were, or even where he was. Even if he could stand to open the curtains, he doubted he would be able to see anything with his eyes in this condition.
Straining his ears, Louis listened for any sign of who had rescued him. As he listened, he heard snippets of whispers from next door, but his brain felt like mush, and though he could hear words, he could not understand them.
Though he was vaguely aware of having some sort of confrontation, his shattered mind could not put the pieces together. It was like trying to reassemble a broken plate, but the fragments changed shape when he wasn't looking. Something had happened with the elda boy and his allies... the royal sceptre... had he turned himself into a human? Everything was fuzzy. One thing was for certain, though - he had lost.
Or had he?
He was still alive. Perhaps... perhaps there was a way... perhaps he could still get the sceptre...?
Before he could continue putting his thoughts back together, someone entered the room - two people in fact. A man and a woman. Having no desire to attempt a conversation at that moment, he feigned unconsciousness. While it took a lot of focus, he was able to force himself to turn the sounds they were making into words he could understand.
"Still no change, from the looks of things," the man said.
"How long ago was it you found him again? Nearly two weeks by now, surely?" The woman replied.
"...Suppose it must be, yeah. It was over a week before the coronation. Same day the Eldan Prince officially won the throne, I think."
"You think he's going to make it?"
"Honestly...? No. But he isn't dead yet, so we have to try."
A damp cloth gently touched Louis' face, and he tensed, though the people with him did not seem to notice.
"The wounds are doing better, at least," the man continued, "I haven't been having to clean them as much."
He pulled the blanket down, and Louis felt his cheeks flush ever so slightly as the cool air hit his skin and he realised he was wearing nothing beneath. In the state he was in, modesty should hardly have been a concern, yet he couldn't help but feel a little embarrassed - or perhaps his state was exactly why he was embarrassed. Immobile and nude, he was completely and utterly at these people's mercy. He had never felt so weak, so vulnerable, so exposed. With every touch of the cloth, Louis' body tensed in anticipation of an attack, of his helplessness being used against him, but there was only the sensation of his face being delicately wiped clean.
"That's good at least," the woman said, and Louis felt her sit at the end of the bed. "Speaking of the coronation, what do you think of the new king? I know you weren't particularly won over by any of the candidates during the competition."
"Well, he hasn't really had a chance to do anything yet, has he? Read about the speech he gave at the coronation in the paper, though. Wasn't bad, I have to say. Be interesting to see what he does without the royal sceptre, though, international politics being what they are."
Louis' heart plummeted into his stomach. Without the royal sceptre...?
"I suppose you're right. Someone's bound to try and take advantage of it having been destroyed sooner or later - we can only hope it's later."
Destroyed.
It was gone. The royal sceptre was no more.
All at once, the half formed plans in Louis' mind tumbled like a house of cards. That sceptre had always been the centrepiece of his plans, the one constant in the ebb and flow of Euchronian politics - for who could destroy the royal sceptre? Who would want to? But whether by intention or simply as a consequence of his battle, the fact remained that it was gone. Louis' utopia, once so close he could feel it at his fingertips, had crumbled to dust, vanishing like sand in the wind.
From the moment he had woken up, Louis had wanted nothing more than to get up and leave, to do something, anything, to try and claw victory from the eldan boy's hands. Yet it all evaporated in an instant. All he desired was to lay there and languish, wallow in his defeat - and in truth, he had no other choice. It was well and truly over, and all he could do was lie there, battered and broken, forced to live with his downfall, every bit of power he'd had stripped away.
It would have been easier if the battle had killed him.
Though the people that had been taking care of him continued chatting and cleaning his wounds, he tuned them out as soon as they mentioned the fate of the sceptre. Try as he might, he could not switch off his brain, stop it from trying to find solutions when he knew there were none. He was only setting himself up for disappointment and frustration, and yet it would not cease. Immobilised as he was, all he could do was think. Almost his entire life had been defined by perseverance towards this singular goal, and now it was gone, leaving only a vacuum behind. Though logically he knew he needed to let go, one's life mission was not so easily replaced.
And so he lay there. Thoughts racing. Unable to escape the labyrinth of his mind.
After a few days, Louis stopped pretending to be asleep when his rescuers were around - primarily because it was humiliating to lie there while they fed him. However, he acted as though he couldn't speak. He endured their presence only because he needed them - once they had outgrown their usefulness, he would simply leave. No need to risk forming any unnecessary attachments.
That being said, it did not make eating any less of a degrading endeavour. Louis' arms were shaky and weak, and he couldn't quite aim them where he wanted to. All he could manage were soft foods, and half of what he tried to eat ended up either falling from his spoon and onto his clothes, or on his face from where he missed his mouth. And then of course, once his clothes were dirty, he needed help changing them - he couldn't lift his arms above his head, or bend his back to do anything more than sit up, and he hadn't even tried to put any weight on his legs yet. He'd employed a valet to help him speed up the process of dressing before - with all his buttons and armour, it got rather difficult and time consuming by himself - but it was much different when he had no choice in the matter. A valet's livelihood relied on Louis, and thus he held all the power. Money was in itself a powerful weapon, and he wielded it like any other, with precision and unwavering conviction. But here he was completely and utterly unarmed. Defenseless. To exist only through reliance on others was the ultimate form of weakness. But what choice did he have?
The return of his vision was slow, but it did begin to come back to him. Once he was able to get a look at his own body, Louis realised that it looked much different to how he remembered - most of one arm and one leg were completely black, and where the skin transitioned back to normal, his veins were far darker, showing far too clearly through his skin. In the centre of his chest was a slight depression from where the crystal heart was sat, damage he knew would be permanent.
As his vision improved, he was able to make out more of the house - or at least, the rooms he was in, which was only really his bedroom and the bathroom. Both of them were entirely mundane, having no furniture aside from what was absolutely necessary. The strangest thing he noticed was a patch above the sink where the walls were slightly paler - the result of a mirror being removed, from the look of it. It seemed likely that they worried about him breaking it - either on purpose or by accident. Either way, it would have been far too easy for someone to get hurt.
Months passed before Louis made any attempt to stand. His legs had been broken, and he was forced to wait out the healing. There was no Zorba to fix him with magic this time. He deliberately waited until the people who were taking care of him had gone out - he didn't want them to see him in such a state. He knew it was going to be ugly and mortifying, and he did not wish to subject himself to such a humiliation ritual.
Carefully, he sat himself on the edge of the bed, then eased himself off, then lifted his arms to steady himself. To his surprise, he did not collapse immediately, and his feet did not hurt as much as he anticipated. He had expected his body to reject the attempt altogether - his healing seemed to be coming along better than he thought. Slowly, he lifted a foot, and while it hurt, it was only a dull ache, as opposed to the severely sharp pain he had come to expect when pushing his body in any capacity. He put the foot down. The other leg shook wildly as it struggled to support all his weight, but it held. One step. This was good progress. Inhaling deeply, Louis tried to take another, but he'd pushed his luck for the day too far, and his legs gave out, leaving him tumbling to the floor. Pain radiated from his palms and knees as he tried to stop himself, and tears pricked in the corners of his eyes. With the way his skin was still stitching itself back together, even such a minor fall was agony. But he would have to persevere.
He tried to pull himself back onto his feet, but his legs refused to hold his weight, what felt like every muscle in his body screaming in protest. Being able to get back up was something he'd taken for granted - but he couldn't now. Gritting his teeth, he turned around, crawling back to the bed and trying to pull himself back into it, only to find that even that was beyond him. The attempt made him feel as though his torso was being torn in two. Refusing to be defeated by a simple bed, he tried again. And again. But the fact remained - he could not pull himself from the floor. He was going to have to wait until his rescuers returned so they could lift him.
Deflating, Louis sank back to the floor, lying on the hard wood. His body hurt. His vision still didn't work as it used to, and he didn't know if it ever would. He had no power to do anything of his own volition, not even to walk to the other room. He couldn't even die if he wanted to.
Putting his hands to his face, he lay there, staring blankly at the ceiling. And then he began to scream.
And scream.
Until his voice went hoarse.
All thoughts of the crown and the sceptre were gone from his mind. All he cared about was putting himself back together, fixing this broken body.
When the healers returned, they made no mention of the tear stains on Louis' face, or his swollen, red eyes. Just lifted him up onto the bed and told him not to try and move himself on his own. Said that they'd bring crutches if he wanted to try and practice walking tomorrow. Louis only nodded. This time, he wasn't pretending to be able to speak. Now his voice was as torn up as the rest of his body.
To say that relearning how to walk was an ordeal would be an understatement. Every day, he would pick up the crutches and try and see how many steps he could take. At first, he could only manage one or two, but eventually he was able to manage a full loop around the bed. He still couldn't leave the room - it sat at the top of a set of stairs, and Louis feared that if he tried to go down them, he would end up with his legs broken again, and in a worse condition than they were previously.
But he kept practicing. Relearning. Louis Guiabern was not a man that gave up. Not ever. His steps got faster as the days went by, and once he got up to a normal walking pace, he was able to walk a little without the crutches. Soon, he was able to tackle the stairs, and all the while his vision improved, until it was as sharp as it once had been - he didn't think he would get it back, but in this respect, he had been lucky.
When his rescuers were out, Louis had taken to exploring the house, pretending his condition was still worse than it was in reality so they would not restrict access to anywhere. Their bedroom was a bit of a mess, with knicknacks and letters covering the surfaces, and clothes piled onto an old chair by the window. The rest of the house was kept rather clean - probably to keep things from Louis - and thus all the mess was kept contained here, to the one room he was not supposed to enter. But enter he did. Was it rude? Nosy? A spit in the face to the people who had given so much to ensure his survival and recovery? Indubitably. But Louis did not care. With his body powerless, the only weapon available to him was his mind. But it would need ammunition - information. Just in case. While they hadn't yet realised who he was, Louis was certain that if they realised, news of his survival would spread, and it would only be so long until he had blades at his throat - assuming they did not kill him themselves, of course. Even if not directly, they might throw him out or send him elsewhere, and either might as well be a death sentence. He needed something to defend himself, and blackmail was very powerful ammunition indeed.
Looking under the bed, Louis found something most curious - a box filled with mirrors. He had noticed the absence of any around the house, but had chalked it up to the owners wanting to keep any sharp objects from him, in case he broke them. When he saw the true reason, he couldn't help but gasp.
His face.
They hadn't wanted him to see his face.
While he'd been aware that his body had contorted as a result of the magla he'd used, he was not prepared for how his face had changed. While one eye had remained untouched, the other now had a black sclera and red iris, and beneath it was a long, deep scar, where it looked like his face had been gouged open. How had he not felt it? Or had he just subconsciously ignored it, wanting on some level to live in ignorance? That wasn't all though - the black lines which afflicted other parts of his body were here too, crawling up his neck and onto his jaw and cheek on one side, and pouring down from the blackened eye on the other. Pulling his lip down, Louis realised that the inside of his mouth had been dyed completely black. Only his tongue and teeth were unaffected. It was, quite frankly, horrifying - and that wasn't even mentioning how gaunt and sunken his face had become simply from the change in his diet.
Louis was not typically one to care much about his physical appearance, about whether or not other people would find him attractive. But that didn't make it easy to reconcile what he'd known himself to look like with the grotesque visage in front of him. He understood why the mirrors had been hidden from him - a weaker man would lose his mind upon seeing this. Even Louis himself could not deny that he was a little shaken.
For a few minutes, all he could do was stare. Then he heard the front door click, and he shoved the box back where he'd found it, and limped back to his room as fast as he could. For all his searching, Louis had found nothing he could use. In which case, he needed to get out as quickly as possible, before these people realised who it was they housed under their roof. It made sense now, why they didn't recognise him. The only people who ever saw him in person were those who attended events he spoke at - outside of cities, people only knew him by his posters and the King's rock. He certainly didn't look like either now.
After a few more days, Louis finally left. His reliance on these people was becoming too strong - he needed to become self-sufficient once more. While he was still injured, he was well enough. Walking was within his capabilities. Running might not be for a while yet, but he had no intention of fleeing from danger. He would face it head on as he always had.
He took a large walking stick for support in case he needed it, and it could double as a weapon if necessary, at least until he got his hands on a proper blade - he had found nothing suitable in that house. Then he was gone. Waited for his rescuers to go out and left without a word. No note. No goodbye. Only an empty bed in the room to which he had once been confined.
Having no map, and no idea where he was, Louis simply picked a direction and walked. With his goal of 'attaining freedom' complete, he found himself aimless once more, wandering in the hopes that he would find something else to throw himself into. Louis was an arrow - he needed a target. Without one he felt useless, hollowed out and empty. He'd never stopped to consider what would happen if he failed, never acknowledging it as an option. He had to succeed - and if he didn't, it wouldn't matter, because he would be dead.
Though he never would have admitted it to anyone, especially not himself, what Louis really wanted was to give up. That was why he could find nothing to dedicate himself towards. But if he was nothing else, Louis was stubborn, and thus surrender was not on the table.
But everyone knew that wandering the Euchronian wilderness meant certain death. There was only one reason why someone in their right mind would wander them alone.
To die.
If he couldn't bring himself to yield, then he could at least find something that could defeat him. In his condition it wouldn't be difficult. But even still, he was not one to let an opponent win - a death like that would be shameful. To go out in a battle where his adversary truly deserved their victory was all he wanted now, even if he told himself otherwise.
Louis couldn't manage much in the way of travelling each day. Half an hour of walking, then half an hour of rest for a few hours, and that was all - any more and he risked agitating his injuries. Despite how much effort it took, he felt as though he was getting nowhere, the same trees, the same bushes, the same dirt, repeating over and over no matter how far he walked, like some kind of purgatory. The first few days of his aimless wandering, he was lucky, for he came upon not a single monster - or was it unlucky? It was difficult to say. But eventually, the scenery changed just a little, as Louis came across the remnants of an old building. It looked as though it had been abandoned, and allowed to fall into disrepair, with the roof sinking inwards, and ivy snaking up the walls. It was difficult to say how long it had been in that condition for, but Louis decided to take a look inside, in case there was anything useful hidden within.
Debris littered the floor, and it was filled with cobwebs and dust. As Louis entered, some birds that had been settled in what remained of the rafters flew out of a hole in the ceiling, fleeing from their uninvited visitor. Spotting an old box that had remained intact, Louis walked towards it, putting as much weight as he could on his walking stick to try and alleviate the ache in his muscles, then collapsed onto it. He scanned his surroundings as he caught his breath. The entire building was this singular room, and it wasn't a particularly large one either. There were a few old wooden storage boxes like the ones he was sat on, a bed, half crushed by pieces of the ceiling that had fallen in, and glass was strewn around in the floor from the windows - not a single one was left intact. His eyes fixed on something at the edge of a piece of the fallen roof. What looked to be the hilt of a sword poked out from underneath, and Louis pulled himself back up, and went to pull it out. It was more difficult than it would have been once, but his strength was gradually returning to him, and he was able to retrieve it from the rubble. The blade was rusted and dull, but if he could find something to sharpen it with, it would make a perfectly adequate weapon. Feeling the familiar weight at his hip brought him a little more confidence, even if he might not be able to wield it with the excellence he used to. But with enough time, he would get back there - all he needed was patience.
With a little more searching, Louis found an old igniter, although he couldn't tell by looking if it was broken or not. It was a little cracked, but the damage could easily just be superficial. Best to test it first - he didn't want to risk it failing on him in battle. He left the building as a precaution, in the event the igniter was dysfunctional, it could start a fire - or worse - and he didn't want to be trapped with it. Carefully, he placed the igniter around his neck, then pulled out the sword he'd found. Imbuing it with some elemental magic would be a simple enough way to test it - the spell was child's play for him.
As Louis held the blade in front of him, preparing the spell, his heart sped up, but he ignored it and pushed forwards. The further through casting he got, the worse he felt, his stomach tying itself in knots, hands shaking, a cascade of anxiety coming over him like a tidal wave. Unable to maintain composure, he dropped the sword and stumbled back, clutching his skull as he tried to breathe, but his throat was constricting, closing, suffocating him as his breaths got shallower and shallower, tendrils of panic squeezing his lungs. A pit opened up in his stomach, growing wider and wider with every passing second, a black hole which scrambled his insides, triggering a surge of nausea which rushed to his head, forcing him to his knees, and he doubled over as he emptied the contents of his stomach onto the floor. It had been slim pickings on the road he walked, and so there was very little for him to throw up, but he continued to dry heave even once there was nothing left. His entire body shook so violently, he struggled to hold himself up, every single hair on his arms and legs stood on end, and his heart beat so fast he feared it might explode. When he wasn't gagging, he was hyperventilating, and though his mind raced, he couldn't hear any of his own thoughts, couldn't figure out a way to calm himself. Nothing would cease the assault attacking his body on every front. Trembling, head spinning, overwhelmed by the fog which engulfed him, Louis curled up into a ball, hugging his knees as tight to his chest as he could, rocking back and forth, pulling his hair in the desperate hope that the physical pain might alleviate some of the mental anguish.
Twenty minutes passed before he returned to his senses, and it took even longer before the shaking and nausea faded. What on earth had come over him, reduced him to such a pathetic mess?
Then it dawned on him.
Anxiety. That was what it had made him feel. An echo of the magic that he had wielded against the elda boy. The force that had made him into what he was now.
His body remembered how it had twisted him. Contorted him. And now it rejected magla, in any form, with every fibre of his being. It couldn't handle it any more. Louis knew without a doubt that if he were to make any attempts to use it again, he would be afflicted once more by this same anxiety. Another of his greatest strengths stripped from him. Was there anything he hadn't lost? His strength. His magic. His convictions. They had been what made him Louis Guiabern. What was he without them? A husk wandering the wastelands? An empty shell?
For a while, he simply sat on the floor, unmoving, processing this discovery. But eventually, he stood. No matter what was taken from him, no matter how the world beat him down, Louis Guiabern would never lay down and die. When the day that his life was extinguished finally came, it would be because someone or something snuffed it out. Not because he allowed it to happen. But if he listened closely to the whispers from deep within his heart, he would have heard the urges. The temptation to let his candle burn out. Yet he had locked away the calls from within long ago, trained himself to disregard them. And so he walked onwards as he always had.
While walking a few days later, he picked up on a sound that was different to the typical sounds of nature he’d grown accustomed to. Heavy footsteps. Panting. Like a creature with so much weight that it got out of breath just trying to support itself. Stopping in his tracks, Louis focused, trying to locate the source of the noise. A rush of excitement began to surge through his veins. Was it finally time for a proper fight?
Louis made no attempt to hide as the monster lumbered into view from between the trees. It had two heads, both with the appearance of lions and a pair of ram’s horns, and it had a tail which became a snake. Not a monster he was unfamiliar with, but he was uncertain how well he would handle it with such poor weaponry and his current state of weakness. The uncertainty was invigorating, intoxicating. What was the point of a battle if not to risk one’s life?
Without hesitation, the creature lunged, and though Louis was able to dodge, he was far slower than he was used to being. He managed to get an attack in, but with his rusted sword, it had very little effect - the monster’s hide was so thick that it only pierced the superficial layers of the skin, and did no real damage. It quickly became evident that if he was to kill this thing, he was going to need to outsmart it, and fast. There was only so long he could dodge for.
As it prepared to ram him with his horns, Louis tried to get out of its path, only to stumble and fall to the ground, his ankle giving out beneath him, and he was just barely able to crawl out of harm’s way before he was hit. Panting, he struggled to his feet, plunging his sword into the ground and using it to pull himself up. But he felt no fear - in fact, he was singularly focused. Watching it attempt to ram him had given him an idea. The trees in this area were incredibly thick - if he could trick it into hitting one, it would likely be dazed for just long enough for him to kill it.
Limping slightly, he placed himself between the monster and one of the larger trees. It took the bait without a second thought - monsters were not renowned for their intelligence. Louis dove out of the way, and as soon as it made contact with the tree, he dashed back towards it, sliding underneath and plunging his sword into the softer underbelly of the beast. The sword still refused to pierce it at first, but Louis put as much pressure on it as he was able, and it slid in, gliding between the creature’s ribs and puncturing its heart. A deafening roar filled the air, and Louis had only a moment to withdraw the blade and roll out from underneath the monster before it collapsed - had he left it in, it would have been lost to him, crushed beneath the thing’s weight.
Spinning around, Louis prepared his sword, but the beast moved no longer, blood pooling out from beneath it. For a few minutes he stood there, catching his breath until he was certain it was dead. Then he sheathed his sword, disappointed. Even so much more feeble than he had been once, destroying the creature had been no challenge at all.
Occasionally, the monotonous, identical days were broken up with villages, though Louis did his utmost to avoid interacting with the townspeople, always arriving in the evening and leaving just before first light, concealing his face as best he could with a hood. When they did manage to catch a glimpse of what he looked like beneath, they would gasp, go pale. Some spat at him, chased him out of town, while others simply trembled at the sight of him, were polite when he asked to buy their wares or stay in their inns, but fixed him with looks of fear and disgust when he turned his back. The only saving grace was that they were so preoccupied with how grotesque he looked, that none of them realised who he was.
When he was in need of money, Louis would simply sell some of the odd bits and pieces he found on the road, forgotten treasures that had been left in places too dangerous for an ordinary person to retrieve, but that the townspeople were all too happy to get their hands on. Some flipped from denying him service, to treating him as a beloved guest the moment they saw the valuables he carried. Such false politeness typically disgusted him, but he was beyond caring. So long as he got what he needed, it mattered not. Before long, he'd managed to save a good amount, and when he came across an adequate blacksmith, he had a better sword forged, and though food was scarce at first, it was not long before he had more than enough to sustain himself.
Yet for all his journeying, Louis still felt idle. This had been what he wanted, once upon a time, back when he was just a boy. To walk through the world, to see the sights, to marvel at the beauty nature had to offer. But the fulfilment of this dream rang hollow now. The aspirations of a child felt meaningless to the mind of an adult. Yet there was some part of him, deep down, that revelled in this ghost's life he now lived, thrilled by all the new sights and smells he got to experience up close, for a fragment of the boy Louis once was still remained in the abyss of his soul, awoken from his slumber after many years spent sedated. Some of the views from the Charadrius were stunning, but they paled in comparison to this, to seeing nature's marvels up close, the the scent of the wilds in his nose, and the wind tousling his hair. When it rained, Louis would find a dry spot, where he would sit and watch until it ceased, the pattering of the raindrops like a massage on his brain, soothing his weary mind. It was a shame that he could not appreciate it with the joy he once would have - he could not allow himself to. The feeling had been numbed for too long.
Time was completely lost on Louis. He could have been travelling for weeks, or months, or years - it made no difference. However, based on the passage of the seasons, and the progress of his healing, months seemed most likely. There was very little residual pain from the battle left now, though he still needed a large stick to help support him when he walked, as he had a perpetual limp that he did not think would ever heal - but considering the fall he'd had, he was lucky he'd regained the ability to walk at all. A limp was perfectly manageable. Though he paid little mind to the villages he passed through, it did seem that under the elda boy's rule, things were starting to improve, slowly but surely. The people seemed happier, more sociable, he was beginning to meet more people who did not treat him as a cursed abomination for his appearance, and he encountered far fewer monsters than he did when he began his travels. Though he had not seen them for himself, he had also heard that the wasteland around Grand Trad was beginning to grow greenery once more. But Louis no longer cared for the fate of Euchronia. The people had chosen what they wanted, and it was this. Why should he care if it made their lives better or worse?
It was as he sat, at the edge of a ruined village, reflecting on all this that it truly hit him just how much time had passed. How long he'd spent drowning in his misery, feeling sorry for himself. Wasting time, moping, and for what? Because he lost? Was he really the kind of man to keel over and live the rest of his life as some pathetic wretch because of one single defeat? When had he ever let a loss ruin his life? He survived the fire. He survived being framed - thrived after, even. He survived the fall. Now he had to make that survival mean something. Travelling was nothing more than a distraction that had set in after the weight of his failures tried to crush him. But Louis Guiabern would not be crushed. If this world wanted rid of him, it would have to stamp him out for good, extinguish all his embers, for as long as he lived, he would have his willpower. Maybe it had waned over these last months, but it had not gone out, and with his fury and embarrassment over how he'd been acting as fuel, the cinders of his determination reignited into a blaze. All he needed was something to direct it towards. His political career was over, as was his military one. He had no desire to get back into either, and the new king would do anything in his power to stop him anyway. Perhaps what he needed was something smaller scale. After a world altering ambition like the one he'd had before, it was difficult to step back. Maybe that was why he had spent so long aimless - there was nothing on par with or greater than his last goal, and it was too shameful to admit that he needed something lesser. Surely he was destined for greater? A man of his strengths could do more, deserved more. But... it seemed more was not in the cards for him.
Pondering what his next move should be, Louis began to walk through the remnants of the village, which, based on the damage done, seemed to have been wrecked in the wake of a human. Burn marks on the buildings, gouges through the walls, making it look as though they'd been torn through like paper, old bones, fragmented skeletons, strewn on the floor. All of this was his fault. Undoubtedly. But his only regret was that all this sacrifice had been a waste.
At the other end of the village, Louis stumbled upon the ruin of an old garden. It had clearly been many years since it was destroyed, and thus many years since any maintenance had been done on it, but despite it all, the plants had persisted. Trees were uprooted, the fences had fallen and rotted, stone walls had crumbled and collapsed onto the flowerbeds, but the plants had refused to die - flourishing better than they ever had, even. Flowers escaped the bounds of their beds and continued to grow, bursts of colour exploding onto what had once been pathways, grass erupted between the cobbles, and the ivy had made a nice home out of the carcasses of the walls that had once kept it contained. Though it was silly, Louis couldn't help but feel a bit of kinship with the place - both refusing to die, no matter what ordeals were thrown at them. Surveying the garden, Louis could see the echoes of the beauty it had once held - though it was a mess now, with a bit of work, it could certainly flourish once more. Like a dull blade, it was just in need of a bit of sharpening.
Drumming his fingers against his walking stick, Louis pondered. Was he not just looking for something he could aim towards? Would fixing this garden not fulfil that? It wasn't as though he had anything better to do, and he had always held an appreciation for the beautiful things in life, particularly those that were earned, like the lavish things he decorated the Charadrius with, or the expensive clothes he used to wear. Yes, he would not only restore this garden to its former glory, but make it better than it ever was. He would give it a second life.
Though he wouldn't have admitted it, there was an element of self-flagellation to his decision. Gardening was tough work, especially now, with his body as it was. This was a punishment for all the time he'd wasted surrendering to his melancholy, and now he would himself doubly hard to make up for it. But the work was undoubtedly worth the effort. He gathered materials, cut back weeds, fixed up the existing plots as well as making new ones, and slowly but surely, the garden began to flourish.
Walking through the garden was very different from the first time he'd done it. Where there had once been chaos, he had made order - the flowers were neatly organised, and even where they sprawled out in seemingly wild ways, it was all done with intention. Vegetables now grew in a separate area Louis had built, tall wooden fences protecting them from the wildlife, expanding the garden beyond its original bounds.
The work had been hard, pushing his body to its absolute limits, which were far lesser than they had been before. Some days, his bad ankle would completely swell up, leaving him with very limited mobility, and forcing him to rest a while until it went back down. Such days frustrated him - he was being forced to waste time, to sit with his own thoughts. It made him feel weak. Unworthy. But this was the consequence of his failure to manifest his ideals into reality, and he would have to live with it, or cease to live at all.
The newfound beauty of the garden began to attract visitors. At first, just the animal variety - rabbits, foxes, birds, the odd stray cat. Louis paid them no mind, so long as they did not damage his garden. Every now and then, a monster would come across the place, but he felled them swiftly and efficiently, then used their corpses as compost. He would not stand for his efforts being undone. Eventually, he began to get guests of the 'person' variety. Stray travellers who happened upon the place by chance would marvel at the loveliness of the place, then spread the word once they moved on, and soon enough, people came with the sole purpose of seeing Louis' garden. He avoided them when they came, watching from a distance as they admired his work, and he could not help but smile with satisfaction at their praise. He always did have a knack for making people fawn over his work.
But with people came popularity. And with popularity, came something that Louis detested - vandals. People with no real thoughts or ambitions of their own, causing meaningless destruction because they had nothing better to do with their miserable wastes of lives, and thus they lashed out at others, feigning strength to hide their own weakness.
One evening, as Louis returned from gathering some materials in the woods, he heard the voices, sharp laughter. He was immediately suspicious - nobody ever stayed in the area this late, for fear of being attacked. The nearest village was hours away by carriage, and nobody wanted to be caught out in the middle of the night. Hackles raised, he crept towards the voices, keeping to the shadows as to avoid being seen. Very little light was left now, bathing the place in a quiet orange light, leaving just enough visibility for Louis to see a group of drunks desecrating his garden. His work. There were three of them, shoving each other around, trampling his flowerbeds, pulling up his plants as if they were nothing but weeds. A cold anger flowed through him, a familiar fury that he had not felt in some time, detached as he was from society at large. Perfectly composed, he reached for the sword at his belt. Silently unsheathed it.
Rot on society had to be removed. Even if he had to work on a smaller scale, this belief of his was unshakeable. And remove it he did, cut it out with ease. Inebriated as the men were, they stood no chance - they'd barely even managed to comprehend what was happening to them before the light in their eyes went out.
Louis was always in need of more compost. It was a much better use for them.
Not long after, the rumours started. Ghost stories. Visitors became fewer, but Louis preferred it that way, as it gave him more space to focus on what he needed to. When he would visit other towns to buy supplies, he heard whispers of the beautiful garden in an otherwise abandoned town, and its strange caretaker. The people said you were free to visit, so long as you did not damage the flowers, for if you did, you would face the guardian's wrath. Some said he was a ghost. Others said he was just a hermit. But he supposed neither assertion was fully inaccurate - in a manner of speaking, he had returned from the dead, and he did avoid most forms of contact with others.
The scary stories spreading meant that Louis began to get more night time visitors - teenagers mostly - hoping to catch a glimpse of the so-called ghost that haunted the grounds, but so long as they were respectful, he was happy to ignore them like everyone else. Sometimes, he would let them catch sight of him. Just for a moment. Just for fun. It was always entertaining to watch the way they ran off screaming.
Louis Guiabern, ghost of the gardens. It was a far more modest title than those he was used to, but it suited him well.