"So, what brings you here?"
She glared at him.
"You're joking, I hope."
"Only half joking. I suppose you've heard."
"Of what? About the fact that you've simply let me down for a week now, and after all we've been through, or about the murder of that young couple by you? I ask you, which of these two cases are you talking about?"
"After all we've been through, eh?" he gestured as if to himself, "and you're the one who dares to talk about this."
"What?"
"Nothing, so, I'd say I was talking about both cases. Why not talk about them one at a time."
"Your abandonment, that can wait, by this horrible murder, no." decided Diria as she rose to her feet and stood resolutely before her lover, who might not be after these heartbreaking moments.
"I'm listening."
Diria bravely faced his glassy gaze, now icy cold as winter must have been in his kingdom.
"And if I didn't wish to explain myself."
Diria gasped, certainly not expecting this retort.
"But why?"
"Because I owe you nothing, just as I owe your world nothing."
"But you had killed people from my world."
"Who deserved it."
"But why?"
"Why what?"
"Why did you kill them?" she insisted, screaming like a fury.
"According to you."
"I don't know anything about it! That's why I'm asking you!"
Gariod was now leaning against the back of his imperial seat as he continued to regard his mistress with his abominable transparent eyes.
"Because they were going to commit the irreparable."
Diria was stunned to hear this.
"What exactly."
"Murdering another of your kind."
"What?"
"You heard me."
Diria didn't know what to think.
"But why?"
"That's the question of the day, it seems."
The sovereign shrugged.
"Perhaps out of sadism, who knows, but what I'm certain of is that one way or another, they've discovered the secret of forcing open the gates of the magical world."
"By committing murder."
"By committing the irreparable."
"So, it doesn't have to be murder."
"Yes, but it's the most irreparable thing I know, so in their sick minds, they figured that committing it, they might as well choose the worst to guarantee it would work."
"And they succeeded."
"But unlucky for them, they landed in my kingdom. After all, I am the sovereign guardian of the magical world."
"I had no idea! Why didn't you tell me!"
He made a sound that sounded very strange to Diria's ears.
"You could have guessed it yourself."
"But I didn't. So," she continued, "what happened?"
Another indifferent shrug.
"They almost succeeded."
"What do you mean 'almost'?"
"There's no third corpse, mind you, so they failed. Oh, they would have succeeded if they'd killed that poor boy of barely ten, however, they had the stupidity to drag him to the forest, thinking to put all the odds in their favor."
I sensed their presence and their evil intentions. I didn't kill them right away; first I wanted to show them the world they were so eager to see that they were ready to commit this irreparable act, and only then, did I kill them."
"You brought them here?"
"To be more precise, in the spring part. They were deliriously happy. You should have seen it, afterwards I tore their insides apart. But I left their heads intact so we could identify them. I'm not a monster after all."
Diria looked at Gariod with eyes that had become fixed, as if she were seeing him for the first time. No, she thought, this being had never taken possession of her body, had never been her first lover, her first love, the being she loved above all else. He had never made love to her, never dotted her body with dizzying kisses and caresses, and never penetrated her in every possible way, with gentleness and firmness, with passion and restraint, with force and languor, over and over again, and never cum inside her weighing her body down with his seed.
No, she refuted, most importantly of all, she had never loved him. She couldn't have. She couldn't love such a being.
"You could only have ordered them to leave."
He seemed to understand how she felt.
"I could have indeed, but I didn't want to. Besides, they could have come back, and that with reinforcements, which was more than likely if they'd ever told anyone of their intention, or worse, if they both belonged to a cult. This may not be the end. I've cut the tree at the root, but the tree isn't dead because the root is deep and diverse."
"So, you're going to kill again."
"Which is more than likely."
"And if...I forbid it."
The wolf winced and an expression passed over his face, fleeting but which hurt the young woman.
"So, you'd rather it was me who died than your own kind, bad as they are."
"So are you."
"But you're not answering my question."
"Because it doesn't deserve an answer. I'm sure there's another way."
Again Gariod regarded Diria with that strange expression she intuited she must understand, but didn't, then burst into a laugh that added further to the ache tearing at her chest.
"Obviously. But what irony!"
These simple words almost made her cry.
He turned slightly and held out his hand.
From the sand emerged the ten-year-old boy who had almost been killed the day before by two human madmen for the accession of the magical world. He was asleep on a stone bed, also engraved with illegible symbols.
"Take him, bring him back to your world."
Already he stood up and irradiated to open the portal.