Originally Posted by
grampagen
With the end of the combat, Zaofan took a moment to take in the airs, finally still of violence. The Martial Chef's stance finally folded, and in his exhaustion allowed his guard to drop for a moment from standing in defiance, and he stood with his hands on his knees.
It's over...this is good...isn't it?
Gulping down deep breaths, it was as if Zaofan had gone under and he'd only just now realized it. Yet with every inhale he felt a slight choking where the air passed the knots bundling from his throat down to his heart and his eyes burned.
Despite what had transpired with his brother, with Jack, and the change that had come over Inanna, all he could feel right now was a great weight upon him he was struggling to keep stready. His shoulders rounded, palms sweaty, cold, and radiating a shiver as he struggled to contain himself.
What have we done here?
With the Channel Focus of the ascendant Mistress on one shoulder and the Silver Butterfly upon the other, it was almost a comical sight, were it not for the panic welling within him.
Time, and Fate, Gods and Mortals. He'd stood gathering the spirit bomb, but the sheer magnitude of what had transpired suddenly hit him all at once and filled his head.
The end...and what days come after...
All around, fields of dust stretched before them; Past Inanna, where the Reshlan capital once stood, a stark plain illuminated by a rising Heka storm. Ochazuke'd only used this technique once before; that was during their last time here. No matter how it looked on this world, across the universe, a should quickly becomes a whisper.
Will this never end?
Shakily, he lift his head, eyes moist as he passed his view upward briefly to where Illargi hung in the distance. Like prickles in the back of his neck, he could sense the residual energy of the Threshlings who would live to see another day.
Even if everything they had built lay in ruins before them.
Slowly his hand crossed to the opposite shoulder and held the Proxy Etrina close in his thin fingers.
"You did what you had to, I think I understand now," he said with a small smile, though the thin, rapid breaths betrayed his vulnerability. "Even if it wasn't for anything else but this moment, you believed in me."
Yet strangely, despite the Silver Butterfly having brought the bulk of strength from a place he'd hadn't expected when the critical time had come, as soon as that passed, despite Evangeline's little messanger lingering, its presence had grown strangely silent. Sweeping a sleeve over his face to dry his eyes, he hastilty tried to cobble together his veneer, and reached out to the thing, as if he could somehow read the energy of this scrying projection.
"Um...hello?"