The fusion dissolved with the particular kind of exhaustion that settled in when someone had been sustaining something longer than they would have preferred.
Like a sprint held until you come out the other side breathing hard; it didn't leave you emptied for the rest of the day, but it asked for real effort, and the asking was felt in the specific way that high-intensity efforts were felt, not in the bones but in the system around the bones.
Liora was more depleted than Ren, which was predictable and no more comfortable for being predictable. Her maximum time in fusion was shorter, the cost per minute higher, and although both of them had more than half their energy left, the distribution between them wasn't even. Ren noticed it and didn't mention it, because saying it changed nothing and Liora wasn't the kind of person who needed her own state pointed out to her in order to know it.
The enormous mutant beast dissolved slowly.
