Welcome to Gaia! ::

Deep within the Rift, something stirred.

Where humans dare not walk, a heartbeat of energy radiated out from the dark purple chrysalis, nestled in the black stone. For years, the splintered starseed had been slowly gathering energy, rebuilding the body within; atom by atom, cell by cell, turning the ashes of a creature fallen from grace into… something. It had been a difficult task, nearly impossible, but at long last it was complete, and Her grand experiment was ready to emerge. The signal was faint, dark energy rippling through the empty caverns, searching for anyone or anything that might possess the strength to free whatever lay dormant inside.

It was a shame that no natural light reached the deep recesses of the Rift, where thick veins of purple crystal wove their way through the obsidian stone with a soft, pulsating glow. They illuminated the cavern just enough to glimmer upon the smooth, faceted surface of the crystal cocoon. It would've been beautiful, were anyone around to see it.. Anyone other than whatever had been pulled together around the splintered starseed and encased safely in the tomb for future use, held together by the pulsing remnant of a parasitic youma that simply refused to die.

Even when Metallia finally decided to shelf her.

In those depths, finding the energy necessary to reassemble a physical form was difficult enough. Finding the strength to call for help? It was a monumental task that had been nearly six years in the making.

Even so, all it could achieve were ghosts. Nothing more than phantoms, projected through the vast network of crystals in an attempt to lure in the one person sensitive enough to detect it and powerful enough to break it open. The one person just crazy enough to wander the unexplored reaches of the Rift, where the true monsters might be found.

If she did not answer, that final chance was lost.

It had her.

The moment Alkaid turned to catch that first glimmer, the slowly waking creature knew that salvation was near. With no further need to conserve energy, it threw every ounce of itself into the final act of drawing the broken woman closer. The senshi's mind was as cracked and fragile as her body, and the being took advantage of every solemn and desperate emotion hiding within. With shimmering bait of purple and black, faint glints of silver armor and gray silk, it reeled her in through the labyrinthine caverns.

Down, down, down, to the place where the living were not welcome to roam.

Which was exactly why it needed her.

A familiar laugh rang quietly in Alkaid's ears, softly spoken promises and echoes of fierce commands, all in garbled words she could not understand. Like dreams floating by, fleeting memories and promised futures. Voices, familiar yet forgotten, calling to her. In hope and pain and joy and fear, they called to her.

Save us, they whispered.

Save us, they screamed.

Save us, they begged.

For years, the hounds had remained.

Steadfast in their loyalty, the two wolf-like youma flanked the entrance to the dark cavern where the chrysalis remained. Their exposed muscles tightened as Alkaid neared, dimly glowing eyes focused on the Ascendant General. Low growls rose in their throats, but they did not move. If she had sent for the blonde-haired woman, then they would permit her to pass into the deep crevasse, though their eyes did not leave until she had fully moved beyond their view. There was little they could do, anyways. Their dutiful guardianship had left them emaciated and weak, and still they would not move.

The energy pulsing from the crystal cocoon was familiar yet strange, but the dark silhouette within was small and fragile, entirely unrecognizable. Enshrouded within the clouded crystal, it remained motionless even as the substance around it shifted and swirled, black ink in deep indigo waters. Eagerness was apparent in the way the dark liquid writhed around the seemingly lifeless figure, waiting impatiently for Alkaid to move near enough. Closer and closer the woman came, her magic radiating as strongly as the light she held above her.

By the time Alkaid saw the thick bands of power emerge from the sarcophagus, it would be far too late. They wrapped around her arms and legs, her waist and her throat, drinking in energy from her as a man dying of thirst might drink of a well. Greedily, it pulled the power from her, unsatisfied until small cracks began to appear in the crystal.

Those same cracks tore through that strange space between life and death, and a pinprick of light shone on the abandoned soul of Metallia's failed experiment.

And it burned.

In that infinite place between life and death, a young woman floated in peaceful slumber. Without weight or form she drifted, connected to life only by the thinnest thread of energy bound to her splintered starseed. A broken thing, irrevocably intertwined with the youma that kept her anchored to life. Metallia's thin leash, available to tug on whenever she might desire to continue her experiment.

Only the pathetic remains of the once greater youma held her starseed together, stopping her from dying. From really, truly dying. She had died before. She would likely die again. But true death? No. That was a mercy she would never get. A mercy she did not deserve.

The same force that took hold of Alkaid found its host drifting in that vast nothingness and snatched her soul up like a ragdoll. It pulled her out of that quiet place and back into the real world. Within the crystal, a pinprick of light grew with each of Alkaid's attacks, until the cracked prison began to give way. The light, painful and blinding, tore through the vision of the young woman trapped inside, as her grey eyes slowly opened.

At last, the crystal shattered, and a pale body spilled out into a harsh and painful and angry world.

What was left of the young woman hit the floor on her knees, barely breaking her fall with one skinny arm. She was as emaciated as her guardians had been, every rib visible as her chest heaved and expelled the liquid crystal from inside her stomach, blue-black pools that spread slowly across the floor. Her arm was missing, and in its place only her mangled shoulder, ending in knots of black veins wrapped around the pale gray flesh.

And even though the long purple hair that stuck to her face and hung to the floor obscured her from view, there was an energy at her core, something dark as pitch and barely contained, that could only belong to one person.

Tanzanite was overwhelmed.

The world spun around her, and the sudden loss of her arm made finding balance nearly impossible. Her hand slipped upon the wet stone, and her skull would've followed had Alkaid not suddenly been there to hold her up. She gasped for air with new lungs, trying to remember how to breathe. How to move. How to think.

Her body had been rebuilt from almost nothing, only the ashes of Metallia’s ambition and the scraps of energy their ruler had left for her. Every muscle was weak and weary. All of her senses were fresh and raw and painful. The pebbles upon the floor may as well have been needles on her skin. The gentle shift of Alkaid’s movement was a painful cacophony, and her light might as well have been the Sun itself. Tanzanite shut her eyes tightly against it and slowly attempted to push herself up.

Touching Alkaid was, generally speaking, not something a person was advised to do. Thankfully for Tanzanite, she wasn't a person, and she wasn't known for listening to good advice anyways. So it was without hesitation that she curled herself against Alkaid, shivering like a child in the rain. For a long while, all she could do was sit there, shaking and confused, gasping for breath and refusing to let go of the Ascendant General while she tried to wrap her mind around the concept of suddenly existing again.

No matter her transgressions, her horrific past, there had been no hell awaiting her, no matter how much she deserved one. Only a vast nothingness, a place where her broken soul could rest, and now...

Now everything was just... wrong.

Tanzanite could not yet comprehend her own fear or anger or sadness. The broken shade of Alkaid's proud General-Queen could not even yet comprehend who or where or what she was, and so she remained close against that warm, familiar source of energy. She wrapped her single arm around herself as best she could, appearing small and fragile even when compared to the blonde-haired porcelain doll who held her.

One thing, at least, had not changed. When Tanzanite suddenly buried her face against Alkaid’s stomach and screamed, it was an awful sound. There was so much in that sudden, prolonged eruption. Sadness and guilt and the raw anger of suddenly being forced into existence yet again. No laughter. No gratitude. She clung to Alkaid to keep herself anchored, until the sound tapered off and Tanzanite whispered the name to make sure she was real.

“...Alkaid,” she weakly managed, just before heaving a fresh stomach full of magical crystal goop all over the Ascendant General’s skirt.

After a while, Tanzanite's grip on Alkaid loosened as reality slowly sunk in and her new body remembered what it meant to move. She looked up at the Ascendant General with one gray eye, a hollow socket where the other should've been. There in Alkaid’s lap rested everything General-Queen Tanzanite would've been without the youma's physical presence. Without the parasitic creature to heal her wounds, her body told the story of her loyalty to the Negaverse in countless scars.

Tanzanite was hushed by the sudden understanding that settled over her. It was with a sudden, wide-eyed fascination that she slowly reached up and rested her hand upon Alkaid's pale cheek. Images flashed in Tanzanite's mind, and she knew that she should feel guilty. But why? What for? The answers escaped her as she looked upon the familiar features and brushed her thumb over the cracks in Alkaid's skin in utter disbelief.

She was real.

Alkaid was real, and that meant so many things that Tanzanite felt overwhelmed once again. If Alkaid was real, that meant Tanzanite was alive, in some sense of the word. That meant Metallia was not yet done with her. If she was alive, it meant the youma was still alive, holding her starseed together like crystal splinters in a tar pit.

She was alive.

No.

No, no, no!

Tanzanite slipped from Alkaid's grasp to slam her forehead against the floor, as though she might somehow break out of this strange new prison, but it did nothing to change reality. Whatever dark, peaceful place she had been resting in was gone, and in its place the cold stone and thick veins of purple crystal that formed her prison.

If there were wild youma nearby, they kept their distance from the pair of ill-fated young women, even as Tanzanite slammed her remaining fist into the floor. She cursed loudly at the pain that shot through her arm, unaccustomed to being hurt by such a simple thing. Once upon a time, she had the power to shake entire worlds, and now she sat cradling her hand in her lap. Tanzanite finally calmed down enough to lean back against the wall, body heaving with each labored, angry breath.

Whatever this… thing was, it was a General-Queen no longer..

“No, I don’t,” she coughed, stopping in the middle to expel one last stomach full of magical purple goop. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth even as she shook her head, “remember anything.”

They were further in the Rift than Tanzanite had ever gone by herself, in a place where her starseed came to rest after Howlite had given it over to the powers of chaos to do… whatever the hell chaos needed to do in order to re-assemble Metallia’s oh so faithful servant. A pattern seemed to be forming. Whether death by bleeding, burning, or having her corporeal form dissolved by an angry space goddess, Tanzanite always seemed to come back.

Something always brought her back. There was too much invested to just let her go.

“They...” she stopped to catch her breath, and gestured to the hounds. One of the horse-sized creatures now stood quietly in the doorway, while the other was still slowly lifting its wilted frame from the floor.

The beasts had waited years for that moment, but they didn't seem to mind.

“They can lead us out.”

“Well then, I suppose we're lucky I only have half a face,” she said flatly as Alkaid helped her up. Her smile was somewhat horrifying, sharp canines set into black gums, a stark reminder that whatever she was... she was not human. But her words, the way she looked sideways at the senshi, was a reminder that she was still herself.

She was still Tanzanite. Irrevocably, awfully Tanzanite.

Luckily for Alkaid, the former General-Queen didn't want comfort. She didn’t know why, but the feeling burning in her core said she wanted revenge. Somehow, she knew that the path would be long and treacherous. So many things in the Negaverse were treacherous, and so many times Tanzanite's loyalty had been betrayed. Only the fragile figure at her side provided her with a calming balance. There was so much that she felt but did not understand, like her trust in Alkaid, a bond that she could not quite recall the source of.

It was a true testament to Metallia's power that she could make someone forget practically destroying another person’s soul.

One of the youma stood against her armless side, ready to break her fall if needed. With the support of both the Ascendant General and the youma, they were able to get her up and moving. Every click of claws or heels on the stone floor made her wince as her body continued adjusting to its new environment. One hound walked ahead of them, its glowing eyes a faint beacon to lead them through the dark.

When she turned her head to look at Alkaid, a dim fire burned in her gaze. The confidence in that look was out of place for a one-eyed, one-armed experiment gone wrong, but it was there nevertheless.

“It's always worse,” she winced as her bare feet landed on a small bit of rock, “… but we’re not done here yet.”