"No no no..." Zilathoga said, "This will not do at all...you are not suppose to be happy..."
"Leave us be!" Hunter growled, standing up to his full height, "She had suffered enough."
Zilathoga laughed, there was a flash, and the Goddess looked to have disappeared with only a black mist where she once stood, but Dementa and Hunter kept their guard up.
Sure enough, the black mist suddenly gathered and condensed, and Zilathoga appeared once again...only in a different form. Now what stood before them was not a mudokon, but a combo of dragon and leopard. The front legs, body and tail where leopard, the rest dragon. A row of quills ran from the back of her head to the tip of the tail and they could see droplets of venom oozing out of the tips. The body was all black like before...only adorned with yellow and green leopard spots. The eyes were the same translucent black orbs with the eerie white glow.
"There is never enough suffering..." Zilathoga hissed, craning her long draconic neck toward them, "for suffering gives me power." She took a step toward them and they took a step back out of reflex. "Now what to do with you...." the Goddess mused, "What would cause more suffering...."
"No matter what you do..." Dementa said definently, "I will find a way to be happy...for I know it is possible now."
Zilathoga visibly frowned, her eyes narrowed and the tail of her tail twitching with annoyance.
"Well then..." Zilathoga said with a dangerous glint in her eye, "I guess I'll just have to torture your soul instead." Suddenly before Dementa or Hunter could do anything, Zilathoga slashed upward with a forepaw, though missing them by a good amount. Though she missed...Dementa felt oddly different, like a part of her was ripped out of her body. She cried out in shock and collapsed.
"Dementa!" Hunter cried as he barely caught her in time before she hit the ground, "What did you do to her!?" Hunter growled at the goddess, eyes blazing with fury.
"Why...did what she always to have done..." Zilathoga said with a grin. "She...removed the curse..." Dementa said weakly. But why? Why would she fulfill my greatest wish other then being happy?
"This is some sort of trick isn't it!?" Hunter howled; Zilathoga just smiled, an evil glint in her eye.
Dementa looked at her hands and noticed to her horror that they had started to rapidly wrinkle and turn pale. She looked and saw that the same thing was happening to the rest of her body.
"What's happening to me!?" Dementa cried out in panic as she felt her strength rapidly leave her body.
"Why...your body is making up for the 300 or so years it didn't get to age." Zilathoga said with a chuckle.
Dementa couldn't believe it. After all those years of wishing she could just end it all death was finally about to claim her. Only she didn't want to die now...not when she finally found a reason to live.
She looked up at Hunter, weakly, who was holding her close. Her eyesight was starting to fail and Hunter was becoming burrier and burrier to her. She tried to speak, but her voice refused to work now.
"I will always remember you.." she heard Hunter say softly to her and she felt the warmth of his snout touching hers.
If only... she thought as the world before her faded, we had more time together...
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