A hideous bellow echoed through the air; Altea had been struck a deadly blow. Her hands reached to clutch at her head and she wailed a monstrous sound. And yet, despite the gut wrenching cry, something about it sounded
human. Despair and anger clung to her; she thrashed wildly in violent, jerky movements.
A light began to glow from her chest, seeping through each crack. The air pressure in the room changed and Altea seemed to be in the center of some vacuum pulling everyone and every
thing towards her.
It was hard to stay firm; the pressure built and built—and then suddenly, it exploded.
She exploded.
Her screams were joined by the sound of cracking glass and what sounded like a violent eruption. In a burst of bright white, shards flew off of her. They shot out in every direction and were sharp enough to tear through the anything they came in contact with.
For a moment, things seemed to move in slow motion, and everything fell silent, sans an earthly, metallic hum.
The room was torn to shreds around the Senshi; the castle melted away around them. The crystals went first, flickering out of existence with small flashes of light. Then the ceiling, and the wall.
As Altea’s light faded, the area became visible. The floor seemed to be fading beneath them, only unlike everything else it seemed as though only the color was stripped away. They remained standing on a single white mirror, and as the last of the wall faded it revealed not emptiness, but an ornate Golden Mirror. Beyond the white platform they all stood upon, there was only blackness.
In the center of the room, where Altea had been, a strange black crystal hovered strangely before them—and, behind it, Altea.
Or, at least, what was left of her. She was no longer a crystal giant; she looked as she had when they’d first met, only
transparent.Her ghostly figure reached for the black crystal desperately. She couldn’t grab it, but she seemed strangely calm—and confused. She looked down at her transparent hands for a few seconds and then back up at the Senshi. She blinked, and then her form faded away. The humming faded with her.
No longer were there any stairs out of the room; everything they had come to know in the past few days was gone.
Only they were left, and the Chaos Seed before them, and the Golden Mirror.
Even the platform they were on seemed like it was cracking; a low groaning noise and the familiar splintering sound of things being torn apart echoed as the platform trembled beneath them.
But, there was still hope to make it out alive.
The Chaos Seed Altea had claimed as her own, that had given her this world, hovered before them. It was cracked, weakened, and covered in a strange, reflective mirror-like coating.
With no words, no actions, it
called to them. It glistened before them, beckoning silently, and then slowly moved towards the golden mirror.
The second it touched the rippling surface, it disappeared—
and so did they.
