Her words bounce into his ears again, filling them with the audacious boom that he just cannot fathom. Why does everything have to be so loud? Everytime he moves, he can feel his flesh heaving against the muscle beneath, and he can smell his own heady musk, the potent stench of masculinity - does everybody smell that? It is the polar opposite to Isopia, whose aroma is like a perfume to his tender nostrils. Has he been deaf and scentless all this time, and is only now being opened to the intricacies of the world?

He shakes his head to try and rid it of the queer sensations, then winces as more black ooze falls from his eyes and lips as well as his nose. How do you know that I cannot also become a wolf? He hadn't considered that. It strikes him, again, that he knows so little about her. His body reacts to her like she has a line hotwired through his veins, and he doesn't even know her name. "Can you?" he questions, openly and blatantly. "I hope not - kis farkas doesn't sound as good as kis holló." Little wolf just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Tempted? "To attack the Moon Goddess, like those others did," he explains. If it had been his brother slaughtered - and he is sure he has brothers, he has just never met them - then he would have done his best to avenge him, even if it meant attacking a God and suffering the consequences. The beast knows little of honour or justice, but he knows revenge. But, he reminds himself, Isopia is not like other horses. From what he's learnt, she is more about the greater good than personal gain, and he cannot deny that vengeance is selfish, an eye for an eye. Somehow, he thinks the earth girl is above such petty emotions - revenge, to her, wouldn't fit in the great balance of everything. Still, he wants to know if, for a glistening moment, she was tempted. If she is capable of temptation, of veering off the beaten path and into sin. Into him.

She wipes her eye with her wing - and it tickles him like a promise on its way past, making a thrilling shudder rush through his skin - and it comes away with the same goo as Volterra's own. He narrows his eyes and swings his tail, tense. Shit. It's the boils all over again, infectious and rampant. She asks if he sees something, and he looks frantically around to try and locate whatever it is she's seeing. Now she's looking at him - she's looking at him! - and his heartbeat increases tenfold, unaware that it may give him away, that his own body could betray him now that she sees all.

What's happening? He wishes he knew. "After the bear fight, myself and some others who fought got these hideous boils on our bodies, which refused to heal. I was only recently cured of them, and I don't fully know how - some Basin unicorn used his magic on me, and the boils disappeared. It must be the new lands, or those who came out of the Rift. Can't be a coincidence that we both fought the wolf, and we both have these symptoms." Shit, he thinks; are her ears and nose hypersensitive too? Can she smell the way his flesh aches when she's near, the way his waves of testosterone seem to intensify whenever he's in close proximity to her? Will his own skin sell its secrets to her?

More importantly, what will the cure be this time? Nothing cured the boils - not eating the Falls foliage, rolling in the dead bear, rubbing on trees. Only being mind-controlled by Calor had healed him, and he has no idea why. How in God's name will they cure this?