the stargazer - tmnt (3) [✔]

seven

CHAPTER 7

BROTHERS AND SISTERS

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NOTHING was familiar when Piper opened her eyes. 

She remembered being in a church where the wooden flooring was showered with dust and small bugs. The stuffy smell was clogging her nose and she couldn't see much with the colored sun rays that peeked through the stained glass. 

Now, everything was bright and it smelled like spices. Piper had to blink a few times in order to familiarize her eyesight with the suddenly bright scenery and when she did, she almost fainted all over again. 

She was standing in the middle of a palace. It was sandy and almost resembled an Egyptian palace with all of it's gold and sand color shades. Tapestries of massive beings fighting with fire and water hung along the walls of the gold-like palace. When she looked around more, she saw stations with men and women selling things, calling out to the passing people who walked.

It was like it was a market inside of an Egyptian temple. 

Piper immediately noticed their attire too. Women who were near children wore headscarves and concealing clothing while women who appeared young, fit, and unmarried bore two pieces, something that Piper would see on belly dancers. 

Intricate jewelry hung along their ears while tattoos of hieroglyphics were along their arms and necks. Some women had dark eyeliner along their eyes while others had henna-like tattoos on their foreheads or corners of their eyes. 

The men wore cloth skirts that stopped above their knees and in the front of their skirts were intricate jewels of gold and other gems. Some were shirtless while others had cloth covers like a toga. To Piper's surprise, some even had animal skins covering their bodies but those, she guessed, where soldiers due to the fact that they were completely muscled up and bearing spears in their hands. 

Piper looked down, yelping when she saw that she was in a sapphire two piece. The outfit reminded her of the Disney princess Jasmine with similar pants and a top, but she had a black and gold shawl around her shoulders and head, sparing just her blue eyes. Along with that, there was a long necklace running down her chest and stopping at her belly button with a pendant at the end; a circle with five lines horizontally cut into it. 

There was just one thing that stood out: she was transparent. 

In other words, Piper was a ghost. 

She licked her chapped lips and looked around until she heard a name that made her freeze. Piper hadn't heard his name when he spoke to her, but the blonde could only imagine that this was the same man who had put her in this strange world.

"It's Altair!"

"The King has come to retake his throne." 

"Everyone must remain calm-" 

Piper looked around wildly with fear until she saw exactly who they spoke of.

He stood at the entrance of the market and while Piper expected to see the same mummified man she had met before, she was met with the exact opposite.

This Altair had vibrant chocolate hair with brown eyes that were lined with black eyeliner. He wore a white skirt with gold jewels in the front, but his bare chest was lined with gold paint that formed tribal designs down to his waist. Angry red scars tainted his perfectly toned chest. 

Piper took a frightened step back when she saw that the men who stood behind him were not men at all, but the same exact things that had taken her from her home.