I've been thinking about Erebos again.
When she first entered the mists she had a plan, she had equipment, a suit meant to protect her against agony and the possible elements.
When she exits the mists, falls out of a rip right into Amnytas, she doesnt remember anything. Her mind is lost, hazy, almost regressed.
It takes months for her to remember parts of her old life. Goading questions, a book placed into her hands. She remembers fragments first. Then one day, they bring her home. That is where she remembers a name. Iowey Lorn.
The first time she speaks it, it feels like a spell is broken. Iowey Lorn. Her reason, her goal, her plan. She remembers all of it. With the memories, her mind returns as well.
She knows she spent multiple years in the mists, years that dont quite translate from her timeline to the one she now finds herself in. The mists and whatever she experienced in them, the details still unclear, have changed her on a funamental level.
She doesnt hunger, she doesnt thirst, she barely sleeps. She's never cold or hot, even when everybody else tells her she's clammy to the touch. Cold and clammy like the mists themselves. It seems as if there is still residue clinging to her. Swaths of greyish mist always moving behind her, hiding her, bending to her will. But they are also an energy signature that others can pick up on. Especially the Wayfinder. She is so in tune with the worlds magic, that any change is noticable.
Thus Erebos can never hide from Iowey. No matter how much she wants to. Looking into her face is the hards part. To know she succeeded in everything she wanted to, to know she can finally have what she has dreamed of. It scares her. She was not prepared to change this much before finding Iowey again. She barely knows who she is anymore.
But Iowey doesn't mind. She can barely recognise herself anymore either. So when she promises Erebos they will figure it out together she means it. And when she says that name, her name, Erebos remembers a part of herself she thought lost in a different life, in a different time.