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She did not like this. She did not like this at all.
When the poison fog had spread across Helovia, it left no corner untouched. It crossed the sea to the Riptide Isles, it slithered under the willows of the Secret Grove, and eventually, it found Sheba in the farthest corner of the Heart Caves. It herded her out of her cavern like common chattle and pushed her, stumbling, across the land. Agitated, Minou slunk alongside her, the static buzz of his consciousness rubbing uncomfortably against hers and setting her even more on edge. “Va t’en!” she hissed, pinning her ears at the cat. Though their souls were supposedly inseparable, their bodies certainly weren’t.
They traveled on in this miserable way until they reached the blackened marsh, conveniently just in time for all hell to break loose. When the corpses started falling, she unabashedly turned and ran into the fog, intending to hide herself—a plan that worked for about a minute, until she was forced to return, sputtering and wheezing. “TIME’S A WASTIN’!" a disembodied voice was booming, and she looked frantically left, right, and above, trying to locate—
Fireball.
She hadn’t seen the god of the sun since the day he had cursed her to live out her days as a hag; she had hunted him for years across the land, hidden herself away so that the world would not see her like this, she had suffered at his whim, and now here he was, swooping in like he would save them all from the force that was massacring them in droves.
“You!” the crone shrieked through her gasps, eyes molten with rage. “Y—NOOOOOO!!” as the god was annihilated just like the rest. She did not mourn him, nor these countless strangers screaming and crying around her. She sobbed for the chance to be beautiful again that died with the god who had cursed her, grieved for her own sealed fate, spending the rest of her days trapped in this useless body, a fucking hag with a fucking cat, a fucking CLICHÉ.
For the first time in her life, Sheba lost control completely.
Screaming like a banshee, she rushed into the crowd, Minou leaping onto her back and leaving bloody streaks with his claws as he clung to her like a deranged and yowling hood ornament, because her thoughts made it clear that it was every soul for herself. Her frail body was tossed this way and that by the stampede, but still she fought, trampling and biting and stabbing her way to the place where Fireball had exploded into nothingness, as if she would somehow pick up the invisible shards and piece him back together. “You can’t do this!” she was shrieking at the dead god, “You can’t—“
And then she was rammed hard from the side, falling roughly into the portal, goal just out of reach.
• • • • •
On the other side, she was beautiful.
At first she thought that she might be dead—after all, she had slammed into the ground (or whatever this was that she was on) with a fair amount of force. She was in a place unlike any she had ever seen before, with no clear explanation as to how she’d gotten there. And, most importantly, the legs crumpled awkwardly underneath her were slender and angelic.
She shrieked in delight.
Even if she was dead, this was decidedly the best thing that had ever happened to her. Woozy with glee, she just barely remembered to take in her surroundings, on the off chance that it still mattered. She felt virtually indestructible.
"speech"
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The Portal
