Her heart and brain seemed to have ceased functioning, and her breath seemed to have stopped.
She vaguely heard her predator howling with rage and frustration, having also stopped at the threshold, pacing back and forth in front of the place she'd entered, unable to decide to enter as he seemed so terrified.
Diria was so tense that she was unable to make the slightest move, even to turn around and see what the monster had decided.
She soon found out when she saw his gaunt-fingered hands with sharp black claws moving slowly towards her.
He was trying to grab her as he lay on the ground, stretching out as far as he could, but with his feet out, as if that fact had to count for anything.
Diria, realizing that he was going to succeed in his stubborn and enraging maneuvers, gathered up what remained of her strength and swung forward to get out of his reach.
She was thus able to face him, and gave him a look as victorious and reckless as his was hateful and demented.
He should have given up, but apparently that wasn't in his nature, the kind of guy with misplaced pride. The monster howled with rage and leapt to pounce on the young woman.
Diria didn't have time to understand what was going on, because at the very moment her predator began this action, which was probably as stupid as it was insolent and above all reprehensible, everything changed: the place she was in, the forest, the coldness, absolutely everything.
Diria couldn't believe she was now in a place that seemed even larger, with ruddy-red soil and a total desert.
"What is this place now," Diria asked herself, wincing in terror.
The cold was still there, but it was no longer as unbearable, and the terrifying, incandescent twilight added to the already alarming and sinister image of this new realm of perdition.
Her pursuer, too, seemed stunned by this transformation or teleportation or whatever it was, so Diria took the opportunity to slip away as quickly and discreetly as she could. But that was without counting her predator who, with his animal killer instinct, pulled himself together and rose in turn to seize her and this time have her.
"Leave me alone! Go away!" Diria howled.
Her cry of anger and despair was immediately answered by a mocking laugh, a rather hoarse laugh echoing throughout the space, and coming neither from her nor from her hunter.
Immediately, an ocean of shadow spread across the scarlet ground and beasts emerged from it, majestic, gigantic wolf-like beasts twice the size of the monster. Their gleaming red eyes stared down at their solitary foe who, at the sight of them, no longer dared to be malicious. He had become the prey. And to his misfortune, he didn't even have the chance to run away or struggle, as the pack of night-coated, ember-eyed wolves pounced on him at terrifying speed and devoured him in no time.
When they'd finished, they licked their lips, turned to Diria, motionless in the middle of the endless desert, and circled around her before smirking, howling and returning to their shadowy realm. But she forgot all about it when, sensing an even more overwhelming and frightening presence behind her, she turned and saw him.
He must unquestionably be the leader of the pack, it was as clear as the water in the cursed hill's blue lake.
He was even taller and more imposing than the others, but with a gaunt, decomposing body - but this time, without the sickening, nauseating smell of the devoured monster.
His light-gray eyes, almost as transparent as glass, deep and unfathomable, rested on her with a fixity that made her shiver from head to toe.
He didn't seem ready to talk. Diria didn't know where her certainty that he could, came from, but there she was, and she began the discussion.
"It was you who laughed, wasn't it?"
The young woman thought he wasn't going to answer, but he did anyway.
"Yes."
His voice was just like his image.
Grave but disembodied, a voice that made her tremble terribly and touched her deep inside.
In fact, everything about him shook her to the core.
A superb animal the likes of which she'd never seen or even hoped to ever see, gigantic, powerful and utterly damaged.
"You could have intervened earlier. I had to cross the threshold of your cursed forest for you to finally decide to take action!"
The sovereign raised an eyebrow before shrugging.
"Indeed I could have. But I didn't want to."
"But I could have died!" cut in Diria, indignant and flabbergasted.
"But you're not! I've decided to wait a little longer!"
"You're telling me! You waited until I crossed the threshold of your cursed forest before agreeing to save my life!"
"Yes!"
Diria opened her mouth wide, attrited.
"How dare you?"
"The one who dares here is you, who you think I had to save you. How do you know I don't want to kill you too? To devour you down to the last crumb."
Diria was still trembling, but this time she raised her head in defiance.
"If you really wanted to do it, you would have done it from the start. By your pack."