He knows something is amiss when his dragons stop their incessant squabbling and instead sit tall atop the beast's back, as still as statues and with a slow, draconic song of lament emitting from both their jaws.

The stallion halts, confusion flexing across his rugged features. What's wrong? he asks both the red and the gold, but neither companion answers him. His question reaches a brick wall of nothingness, because the dragons are both fixated on something that the brute cannot see. Suddenly, as one, Vérzés and Vadir hurl their weights forward and take to the wing, flying in unison, wingbeat to wingbeat. The young golden queen, still relatively inexperienced at flight, soon lags behind the larger, older red, but to Volterra on the ground, they both appear as blurs of glimmering scales in the sky.

With a snort, the black behemoth throws his weight forwards into a heavy canter, devouring the ground in front of him as he follows his dragons. The wind whips his skull-adorned face and rips his mane into a tempestous tangle behind him as canter turns to gallop, faster than he's ever gone before, faster than any creature of his sheer muscular bulk has any right to go. What's wrong?! he asks again, his mental voice more commanding this time, demanding, but again he meets nothing but the steely silence of his companions. A growl rips free from his jaws, hauled away by the wind.

He hammers his consciousness at his dragons, until finally he can see through their eyes. The ground is a sickening blur beneath them as they fly, and vertigo knots the hellion's stomach as they both turn and bank downwards. Through both of their eyes, Volterra catches a glimpse of a black mare, a fully-grown golden dragon by her side, and....Amaris! She is familiarity, she is a memory of his youth, she is....

Crying.

His hoofbeats are thunder as his gallop intensifies, until sweat breaks out on his flesh and his lips begin to foam. Finally, he can see her through his own eyes, stood over the corpse of a black mare bonded to a golden queen. That must be her mother, who she'd told Volterra about all that time ago. With a groan, the stallion slams on his brakes and skids to a halt near to her, sweating and heaving with exhilaration as he looks at her. Just as the corpse, not-yet-a-corpse, speaks her final words - words that the beast feels almost intrusive for having heard. This is a sacred moment between mother and daughter, and he glances away, pretending he didn't hear.

His dragons, red and gold alike, have landed next to the fallen body of Akaith. Their song is one of mourning, of sorrow for a dead kinswoman, an elder queen passed into the abyss. Volterra always knew dragons had some sort of mental sixth sense that manifests around others of their species, and they must have felt the passing of one of their bonded cousins. Vadir, in particular, seems quite distressed by the body of a fellow gold, a fellow queen, and she swings her knifed tail with evident anxiety, her horned head bowed. Even Vérzés, who respects nothing female, dips his head in lament, his song gruffer than Vadir's but no less soul-wrenching.

Volterra, meanwhile, looks to Amaris. They have both grown since last they met - he has reached manhood, with all its perks of power and brawn, and Amaris...is as beautiful as the day they met. Hunger gnawls in the stomach of the beast, but now is not the time for wicked innuendo. "Amaris," he rumbles, his rough baritone of a voice a far cry from the squeak he'd possessed when they first met. "Is this...your mother?" It has to be - who else could have birthed the dragonmare? He fixes his crimson gaze on the hybrid, mustering an expression as close to sympathy as one of his dark, foreboding, hulking mass can possibly summon.