Confusion
The way down was, thankfully, a lot less rough than the way up. All they needed to do was take the elevator down and walk the rest of the way, back where the men they had saved were hopefully still waiting. Strength would find herself hoping that the barrier had held out for as long as it had needed to.
But she thought of other things as well, even as they all walked in what seemed to a conscious decision to hold silence. She thought of Kazama carrying down the corpse of a hero who had given everything he had to this world, down to his very life. A hero that, in another time and another place, might have very well have ended up being a champion for both herself and her sister. Even she could not help but admire his determination and strength. It seemed like a waste – a fine mortal lost, and so many had not even known what he had been doing all along. Nuhava vowed to change that.
She thought of Toshiro, whom Azul kept a careful eye on, and how none of them would truly come out of this process the way they once were... be it consciously or not. The signs were there, and Strength knew how it felt moreso than she actually showed. Even now she could feel the rune Keme had put upon her host unravel under her own power. She had not checked on the marking itself, but she was certain even the ink was slowly vanishing as well. It was no ordinary ink, after all. Nuhava knew that Taylor's animal form was lost, but the reflexes seemed to linger. Or were those hers ? She honestly had no idea.
And her thoughts, of course, turned to the obvious as well. Even now she was not entirely certain who was actually making the body walk in step with the others, herself or her host. She could not tell which one of them shuffled a bit, pulling the cloak they wore closer in an attempt to block out the cold a little more. It was still stained with Azul's blood and other, more unpleasant things, but Nuhava was certain of one thing – neither she or Taylor cared about that right now. They both wanted to be out of here, out of this place and back into the more tolerable cold of Dragonblight. This was a much different kind of cold, so cold that it seemed to sink down to their very bones.
Nuhava was not certain which one of them shook their head and said that they were fine, simply cold, when Akakios asked how they were faring. It had come out in her voice, but her host would have answered much the same.
Taylor was confused, and to be honest, so was she. Not being in complete control of her own mind irritated her. Before, they had been two separate beings, as if a wall had stood in between them. Strength had been able to bypass that wall somewhat, but her host had not been able to do the same. Now it was as if that wall was crumbling and things were leaking back and forth.
The process felt even stranger to her than it did for her host, who was honestly much more adaptable than she was. Taylor had his share of fretting, of confusion and of being bothered by the fact that he was evidently losing the barriers that made him his own entity. But he had realized that this was not something he could do much about, and simply moved past it. She had yet to truly do the same, but slowly his own feelings were steeping over to her.
Or was her own outlook changing ? Again, she could not be certain. This was not what she had expected when this process had started, but it could not be helped.
All they, the both of them, could do was move forward.
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