The moment the crystal shattered, the entire underground cave seemed to freeze for an instant, no sound, nothing happening at all, and then, like a chain reaction, several things began happening at once.
The giant plant, already in a strange state, began withering rapidly. The eye sockets covering its surface went hollow, then shriveled away. The toothed mouths watched their teeth thin out, turning yellow, then black, then nothing at all.
Within only a few seconds, the terrifying plant that had been a nightmare for Lirien's group finally died, withering down to nothing but a dry husk that began crumbling away into strange black particles.
Lirien, who had been relentlessly killing those creatures until now, having already taken down about a dozen Forsaken and gathered several of their cores, had realized that even if she killed a hundred more, it wouldn't make a real dent, because for every being she eliminated, three more seemed to take its place.
