As the wolf's tail descends beneath his legs, the red dragon's eyes gleam with the sweet scent of victory. He moves closer, jaws opening, ready to seize the raccoon and snatch it away from its killer, when suddenly it lurches into life and soars into the air. With an outraged bellow, Vérzés fans his wings and circles the floating corpse, painfully confused. "???" is all Volterra can hear in his mind as the crimson beast continues his circling, desperately trying to fathom how the carcass has suddenly jumped back into life.

Volterra, in contrast, gives a ground-shaking guffaw of amusement at his dragon's bemused behaviour. His greedy gaze admires the dancing corpse, picturing all the useful things that could be done with such a magic. Because it's obvious to him that the filly is the one controlling the carcass - it's the only logical explanation. "Nice," he rumbles, gaze following the racoon's posthumous dance. It reminds him of Rikyn's magic, except the unicorn could control living bodies whereas this - he assumes - is limited to the dead. Both branches of dark magic hold a morbid curiosity for the leviathan, who would love to control life and death itself and be able to use carcasses as his foul minions. Yet his powers are intrinsically tied to the earth itself, and it is the earth he has chosen to master.

She warns him from the Dragon's Throat, and again that sculpted brow lifts beneath his skull-mask. The Throat are already in his bad books for taking his mother from him, and whilst he knows next to nothing about them or their leaders, he has filed away their crime for the future. Stealing Confutatis had placed one small mark against the card of the Throat, and, indeed, when it comes time for him to seize a crown, he'd be lying if he said he hadn't considered them as an option. But he says none of this to the girl - he simply smiles a wolf's smile and tears his gaze from the dancing raccoon to look back at her. "We'll see." Who knows what will change between now and then? Another herd might irk him so much that they become the outstanding candidate for his wrath.

She gives her parents' names, and he files them away. The fact they both have two names shows that they have accomplished much within these lands, but save for the distant memory of the antlered brute who stole Mother, Volterra cannot place faces to names. The girl states that she and her twin will rule the Throat, and the beast's ears pivot with nostalgic interest. How he had thought the same when he and Nymeria were children! Now....now he thinks they would clash over everything, compromising the welfare of the herd. "A twin, hmm?" He scrutinises her, wondering if this twin is the Volterra to her Nymeria, a colt who dwarfs her in stature but is by far her intellectual inferior. "Give it a few years, dear girl. You might find that you no longer want to rule alongside your twin, that you fight like cat and dog when you're together." And pain flashes momentarily across his masked face.