Crunch! A fragment of bone splits from the brute's kick, but the skeleton seems unconcerned by it. A savage hiss slips from his teeth, whilst a combination of satisfaction and frustration burn through him. Satisfaction that he landed a good hard blow on the bone, but frustration that it did not shatter the limb into pieces as he hoped. The giant had perhaps underestimated how hard this battle was going to be - he half-expected the skeletal giant to submit after a single hit, squeak an apology and blend back into the shadows. It is not to be. This will indeed be a fight to the bitter end - be it Volterra's or his foe's. The earthen colossus knows what he's putting his money on. Images of shattered bones and screaming skulls flash before his eyes, sweet and succulent victory...

But there will be plenty of time for that. Rage still burns beneath his skin, bubbling like the heart of a volcano. Any notion of fear or trepidation is swallowed up by the thrashing waves of potent fury that sear inside him, causing sweat to froth across every hard plane of his body. He channels that rage, wields it like a sword. In the absence of battle experience (or, at least, absence of battle experience against giant undead hell-creatures), all he has is his instinct. And his instinct knows that, throughout his life, his explosive temper has given him power. Fearlessness. When the red mist descends, it swallows everything else in its path.

It makes him take risks. It makes him foolish, violent, brash. But it also lends him a feeling of invincibility, for better or for worse. If he is to win, decimate this creature spawned from the darkest depths of anybody's nightmare, then he needs to ignore any concerns about getting hurt. He can't fret about the consequences of his attacks. He needs to enter the zone and stay there, channel every ounce of his strength and not give a shit about what this creature could do to him. To do that, he needs his temper. He wears it like armour, feeling it caress his flesh like the touch of a lover.

Just as well he isn't worried about pain, because no sooner has his attack landed than the demon is launching one of its own. (Is it an it, or a he? It seems masculine, but Volterra can hazard a guess that it doesn't have any balls.) Again, instinct takes over as he glimpses jaws heading towards his face, and despite the screaming protest in his wounded hindquarters, he forces himself to take a small hobble backwards. It's slow, and there's no way he can avoid the attack fully. But the step backwards, coupled with a downwards flinch of his head, means that the creature's teeth only clip the region just above his left eye, mercifully protecting the stallion from being half-blinded. Although blunt horse teeth are not built to rip flesh, the sheer force and angle of the impact breaks the skin of Volterra's left eyebrow, creating a small bead of blood that trickles down into his eye and causes him to blink furiously. The cut is not particularly deep, but is coupled with a bruise from the strength of the attack, causing a headache to thrum in the back of his mind.

Do it more, screams his temper. Give me more reason to fucking break you. The pain of the blow, coupled with that in his hindquarters, only spurs the titan on. Alas, his rage does not numb his wounds, but it does force him to tear his focus away from them and onto the rest of the battle.

After his attack, Vérzés ascends, taking a small breather. The dragon usually has the unrivalled stamina of a hunter, but he, like his bonded, bears a painful wound that restricts his movements. But Volterra is still capable of causing damage, even when handicapped. He channels his potent, animalistic anger into magic. He grasps hold of his power and commands it, mastering the earth like a puppeteer. He bids it to lift into a plateau beneath Gashad's back hooves, trying to burst it up to knee-height in an attempt to make the skeleton lurch forwards and badly unbalance him/it. Simultaneously, the leviathan heaves his titanic frame forwards a fraction and flicks his left foreleg forwards in an exact replica of his last attack; he aims for the same area on the skeleton's right foreleg, where the bone is already chipped, to try and damage it further or perhaps shatter it completely. He hopes the skeleton will not think he will try the same thing twice, and also hopes the demon will be too preoccupied by the earth lifting under his hindlegs to be able to avoid damage.
__________

@Gashad !
Tries to erupt a plateau of earth beneath Gashad's hindlegs to try and unbalance him and make him lurch forwards, and tries to kick left foreleg at right foreleg again.

2/3 - 799 words