[For Isopia, continued directly after this thread. Permission from Time for her to PP Abraham standing in her clearing.]

Emotional resiliency was not one of Isopia's strong suits, nor an aspect of herself that she worked on often. And so, as the two wicked winged fillies and their companions finally left her clearing, the dragon-body Isopia had cloaked herself in seemed to disappear off of her. It wasn't so much as a transformation back into her equine body, but more of a collapsing. Her large shoulders were hunched forwards, and her knees almost immediately touched the ground as soon as dragon claws gave way to hooves, for balance was the farthest thing from the demi-goddess's mind at the moment.

A sound resembling a sob left her lips as she finally released the breath inside of her chest that revealed just how emotionally vulnerable and wounded she truly was. Spittle dripped off of her maroon lips as her mouth remained open in a silent sob of anguish. Her golden eyes remained closed as her large wings wrapped around her half-kneeling body as if to shelter her from the world.

Coherent thought had all but left her, for her mind was too full of flashing images of the fillies, and how they and their companions dug up the grave of her unborn child. Her murdered child. Her last link to Volterra.

And, because emotional intelligence was also not Iso's strong suit, introspection would have revealed that she didn't actually know what she was feeling all these emotions about. Was it because her last tie to Volterra had been desecrated? Was it the potential of her secret being revealed? Or was it a mother's grief and anguish at seeing the body of her child so unceremoniously dug up?

Before the grieving demi-goddess could try and sort through the fog of images and emotions clouding her judgement, a soft voice penetrated her thoughts. Immediately Isopia's body tensed, for even though she rarely displayed emotional outbursts such as this one, she knew that Hubris would not have disturbed her without good cause.

>>Here again<< The dragonling whispered into her mind, and flashed an image of Abraham. Immediately Isopia's mind paired this with nearly an identical moment last Frostfall. Abraham had stood silently just outside of the ring of trees that separated her clearing from the thick forest around it, only then she had been burying her child for the first time.

That he was here to see her do it for the second should have been poetic, or a marker of some sorted fated intervention, but instead of seeing it that way, Isopia only saw red.

Her quad horned skull shot up from its place beneath her hooves on the grass and her wings splayed from her sides. Snot smeared across her shoulder as she forced herself to rise and spin, wanting to pin the bi-dragon accompanied stallion in place with her golden gaze. Isopia's nostrils flared with each hateful punctuated breath as the rage she had felt when she first found the fillies - before they had scurried away - bloomed once again inside of her. Tears still dripped down her cheeks, and while a few moments prior, hidden beneath her wings her tears had felt soothing, now they only felt misplaced. Somewhere in her incoherent mess of thoughts this was his fault. Sure it was. It had to be. He was the only one who knew about the burial. That was all the logic it took to lift the demi-goddess's hooves from the soft but dry ground, and send them galloping towards him.

She might have screamed something at him as she ran towards him, Why are you here, or this is all your fault, but her lips were as numb to the workings of her mind as her body was. The Mountain was moved by pure instinct and emotion, a dangerous combination in Isopia's case for she lacked any real control over either. She was a rational creature and a cold one, not the weepy, emotionally volatile mess she had

Likely she would have to add this unprovoked attack to her growing list of emotionally-fueled poor decisions.

Rather than reaching for her magic, the demi-goddess sought to feel her body against his. Abraham was a formidable opponent - she knew that from experience - and she did not expect his flesh to yield beneath hers. But she had grown since their last spar, both in size and in strength. Though she did not expect to beat him, she vowed she wouldn't end this spar on her knees.

Horns lowered, Iso aimed to collide her left shoulder with his, and to rake her horns down his neck if at all possible. She folded her wings flat against her sides to prevent unnecessary damage, which would likely prove to be one of the only intelligent decisions she would make for the next few minutes.