Black and red rear and thrash, hundreds of years of colour hierarchy pushing itself to the fore. The fans at the side of the crimson's face erect and ram forwards to increase his size, and his full and formidable weight leans onto his hindpaws as he lifts himself high with a beat of his leathery wings. Stop it, scolds Volterra, his bonded's emotions a potent soup of male dominance. He's your brother. Vérzés' tail sweeps low and hard to balance him, every tense muscle in his blood-clad frame screaming at his black brother to submit!

Submit, thinks Volterra; oh, the thought of his sister submitting to him as her dragon knelt to his own! Bending to his strength, her flesh sweaty from the clash of their bodies, ears pinned and icy breath misting the air as male superiority folds the knee of his beloved twin and lifts his weight onto her, to take as the heat between his thighs demands he take...

The red's savage snarl drags his thoughts away, and the fork at the end of his tail slaps the monolith's heated flanks hard. Volterra's head swings upwards and he reverses a step, breathing hard. He misses his sister's first comment, only coming down to earth at her shattering revelation; Lil sees your bonded, Vérzés, doesn't breathe fire. "What?! Surely not. Surely the Gods have not given him a dud. Feeling disgust pouring in waves from the black leviathan, the red gives a somewhat anguished snort, curling his wings to lift himself high into the air. Volterra feels his concentration, his hunger to prove himself and to show he isn't a draconic reject; that he doesn't need fire to bring his bonded the glory he craves...

Vérzés' jaws open wide and from them comes a torrent of ice, a deadly blast of freezing air that seems to condemn the air itself to a frigid grave. Even a good few feet below his soaring bonded, Volterra can feel the unearthy chill emenating from the scarlet beast, waves of arctic air billowing from the breath between his jaws. The red slams his fangs shut with a clack and returns to his bonded's withers, his thick chest heaving but his mind swimming with arrogance. "He breathes ice," murmurs the colt in an awestruck whisper.

Not a dud, then. Just different.

Dragging his gaze back to his sister, his heated blood cooled as if by his dragon's frost, Volterra fixes his eyes upon her. She is indignant, her skulled face ablaze at the very notion her mother could be violated so, and the colt wants to hang his head in shame for bringing the truth words to her ears. "I know not what they do to her," he confesses, his nostrils wide and breath hacking. "But I know they will want to break her, dominate her. You know her as well as I do, Nymeria; she bends the knee for nobody. But they will want her submission, sister. They will want to crush her spirit from her, to show the world they snapped the World-Eater." His impassioned tirade leaves his muscled chest heaving and one colossal forehoof pawing at the cold sand. This likely isn't what spider-sister wants to hear, but it is the truth. The Throat will want to bend their prisoner, the woman who has been a thorn in Helovia's side for so long; what is the most demeaning way they could do that? Volterra knows. She had been taken by a stallion, after all, with a stallion's lusts and thirst for power.

Dammit, he wants to march right there and tear them all apart.

"You see why I want us to go to her?" he questions, his scarlet gaze never wavering despite how much he hates himself for saying these words. "But then, I don't want to put you anywhere near them, because I fear they would do to you what they could be doing to her." Think of it, the World-Eater and her flowering beauty of a daughter - no! Both Volterra and his dragon release a feral hiss at the very thought.

"I don't know what to do, Nymeria," he says, head hanging. He is not used to powerlessness or indecision, and he loathes them.