The goliath marches through the now-familiar embrace of the Threshold, the ground quaking and quivering beneath the force of his colossal hooves. He creates a war-drum rhythm on the snowy ground, a cacophony of size and sheer brute strength. He is alone, his dragons hunting in the depths of this strange forest - he has commanded them to co-operate and bring down larger prey, so reluctantly they both pursue a large deer together.

Aside from the ravenous emotions of his companions that ebb into his mind, Volterra feels nothing. He is pure beast, a creature of impulses and needs, even moreso than he was before. This is what Isopia has done to him. All he knows is the ground beneath his feet and the chill winter wind in his mane, the tickle of frigid air on his sweating, heaving flesh. He knows only the gnawing of hunger in his belly, the twitch of lust in his loins, and the quivering of his thick muscles which demand to be sated on the battlefield.

He has come here just once before, when he met his brother - there is nothing here for him, not really. Most who come here are seeking homes, or heading out into the wilderness; he half-contemplates following them, to see what he can take outside Helovia. Perhaps he could go and live with his father, and be raised to princehood with his dragons; no doubt his sire would secure him many women to indulge in. After all, what is the point of anything else but the simple cravings of the flesh? The loss of Isopia has left him numb, his emotions turned off to be replaced only with simplistic, animal want.

That, and anger. They are all he knows. When this all passes, when he's normal again, he will look back on this dark, dark period in his life and think it has made him stronger. But now, in the depths of it, he sees no end, no light at the end of the tunnel. So he chooses not to think about it at all.

Then, he smells mare. His nostrils flare, his hunger erupts. He prowls towards her, his neck arched to display each rugged muscle and toned sinew. He bursts out of the trees, sees her, drinks her in.

She is a fine broad, a delicious example of woman. He thinks he would rather like to take her, to delve beneath those four wings and sate his thirst; the fact she is golden only increases her beauty, as the stallion has a keen eye for such royalty. He has gold bonded to his mind, after all. His eyes darken dangerously, the thrill of the hunt, the take...

But then he sees the other. His head jerks away from the grown mare and shifts towards the filly nearby, the familiar white filly... "Erthë?" She has grown since last time they met, at Vadir's hatching - but what is she doing here? Has she been outside Helovia, to those strange untamed lands beyond the Threshold?

The beast looks back to the golden mare, but his desire is somewhat tempered by Erthë's presence. Like a little white cockblock, she's taken his mind away from the woman and onto her - she has a knack for that. He remembers their first meeting, when she distracted him from his newfound two-year-old desires and gave him a few precious moments of relief from the then-unknown aches of his body. "What are you doing here?" His voice is toneless, lacking passion; a clear indication of the nothingness inside.