Her nose still hurting, an unmistakable wet feeling along her face and her hoof telling her it was starting to drip blood, it took Starlight a moment to get a better, proper look at the scene. Chrysalis was still there, still probably not in a right state of mind if her actions were any indication, and she was currently staring down Twilight, who was blocking the door.
The changeling seemed to just look around for a moment, her expression hard to decipher. Before anyone could say anything, though, she was acting again. A green dome of energy appeared around her, slightly distorting the view of what was inside, and just for a fraction of a second Starlight noticed the glint of a scale showing itself on the floor in front of the changeling. Evidently, something she'd taken with her. A green beam of magic fired from the tip of Chrysalis's horn, and the portal opened in front of her.
Chrysalis began to walk, slowly, towards the portal. No other spells cast on herself, no signs of the rush she was in a moment before. Twilight banged with her hooves and her magic against the shield, to no avail. "She's probably taken that from storage. I have no idea what's on the other side!" the alicorn told Starlight, while Chrysalis still kept on walking, as if hypnotised by the light in front of her.
Starlight screamed at the changeling to stop, as her magic too wrapped around the bubble in an attempt to break it down. It did nothing. A moment later, Chrysalis had disappeared, and the green dome shattered in a shower of sparks.
Without even thinking about it, Starlight rushed to the portal, casting the protective spells she'd by then memorised on herself.
Her first impression of the other side was that it was blindingly loud. Only after a second or so did she realise there was no sound, and what she thought she was hearing was all in her head. The spells partly protected her from the mental assault. Chrysalis, standing a few metres ahead of her, did not have the same luck.
And looking a little farther, Starlight could see the apparent source of the chaos ringing in her head.
It stood taller than the castle they'd just left, an ill-defined mass that blocked out the Sun and seemed to shift in and out of existence. It looked vaguely like it should have been a head of some kind, though Starlight couldn't identify any features on it. Between the confusion assaulting her mind and the creature's own waning nature, she couldn't really focus on it at all.
She tried, instead, to run her gaze down the creature's body, only to realise that it was one with the ground she was standing on. It was made up of fibers or tubes, somewhat reminiscent of an exposed muscle or a collection of pipes, and it looked like a combination of flesh and bone, rock, tree bark and grass, all the same sickly and rotten grey colour.
The sounds in her mind shifted, and she realised there was something different about them. She focused on Chrysalis again, and watched the changeling walk closer and closer to the creature. In her head she could hear a different kind of sound, less chaotic, separated from the maelstrom of confusion that still raged on. Almost pleading in its tone.
Starlight tried to move, or reach out with her magic, but found it led only to fits of pain that left her stuck in place. And so all she could do was watch, and listen. As Chrysalis stepped closer and closer to the creature, the two voices in her mind, one distinctly singular, the other like an orchestra of different entities speaking in unison as a cacophony of screams, kept on what seemed oddly like a conversation, though they also reminded her of two singers trying to get in tune with one another.
Chrysalis took another step. Her hoof touched the creature. The two voices in Starlight's mind spoke as one.
Then, the scream, lacerating in its intensity and pitch, as Chrysalis's hoof melded into the creature's body and the rest of her was forcefully pulled inside, despite her struggles.
Starlight stood there, frozen in place, as she watched Chrysalis's body disappear, and witnessed her mind being swallowed by the creature's. Then a pair of hooves wrapped around her, just as the creature was turning towards her, and she was dragged away back out of the portal.