He knows nothing but pain.

His life is consumed by the creeping, itching sensation of bones knotting together, the uncomfortable tingling of bruises unfolding and spreading across maiden flesh, and the wicked, throbbing agony that heralds each breath. The days have blurred into one, sun blending into moon with hardly a twitch of his mammoth head to acknowledge the subtle passing of time; the only constant is the pain.

Some of the pain is not even his own. Poor, broken Vadir; proud queen of dragons, savage beauty, merry murderess wrapped in golden armour, reduced to a cripple. Her ribs are in an even worse state than Volterra's, with almost every single one on her right side broken by the impact of his earthen fist. She cannot move, cannot hunt, cannot do anything but rest upon Volterra's broad back, relying on her much-maligned red brother to provide her with food. It kills her to be so helpless, and the stallion's mind is a constant red stream of rage and hatred bubbling from the cruel caverns of her mind.

Her ribs will knit and heal, and she will be back to terrorizing the skies in a matter of weeks. Her wounded pride, however, will never sew itself back together like a shattered bone, and her trust in Volterra is permanently shaken.

At first he was apologetic, profusely so. But as she continued to mention it, continued to criticize him ("why didn't you fight back, she's nothing to you, you will be King whilst she beds with the peasants, you should have annihilated her", to paraphrase), he finally snapped. You disobeyed me, he'd roared at her, his mental voice a crushing hammer-blow to her protestations, his entire body tightened and hardened with pulsing rage; I ordered you not to attack her and you did it anyway. Your injuries are your own fucking fault, and I'm not going to take another minute of your whining, Vadir. My reasons are mine and mine alone, and you need to suck it up and get the fuck on with it.

Had Vadir not been so badly injured, nor so stunned into silence, then Volterra may have embraced the grave far sooner than he'd intended. As it was, Vadir had simply hissed her fury and snapped their mental bond down to the tiniest of tendrils; she has reverted into a stony silence, refusing to speak to him or even acknowledge his existence. She rides on his back out of necessity, but blocks out every one of his attempts to converse with her. Their confrontation happened two days ago, but they have exchanged nothing since.

Vérzés is stuck in the middle; he understands why Volterra hadn't wanted to attack Isopia, but he's also keen to stay in the place he's recently found himself - Vadir's good side. The one positive thing to come from the fight is that the two dragons are on better terms than they've ever been before, largely because of Vérzés' willingness to take an attack meant for his golden sister. He hunts for her with hardly any complaints, and she even allows him to examine her wounds. Volterra watches them converse with each other with a tingling ache in the back of his mind that he recognises as jealousy; he has always been their go-between, and now they seem to be exiling him from a bond that exists inside his own mind.

None of this, though - not the persistent pulse of agony in his ribs nor the frosty absence of Vadir's mind inside his own - compares to the rancid ache of Isopia-hurt that pervades his entire body, that soaks into each muscle and each inch of battle-sore flesh like maggots through a carcass.

He has rationalised her actions by putting them down to grief. Volterra is the resident expert of transforming less desirable, less controllable emotions into ones that he understands, namely rage and lust. Sorrow, anxiety, grief, fear, love - they can all be twisted and shoehorned into anger, which he can pump through his body like fuel and wear like armour. In the leviathan's somewhat illogical mind, sorrow is weak but rage is strong, therefore transforming the former into the latter makes him strong by proxy.

He was wrong. He's only halfway through his quest for the Earth God and already he's felt far more - and suffered far more - than ever before. Indeed, twisting those emotions into anger suddenly seems not like strength, but cowardice, because they're a damn sight harder to cope with than his favoured fury and lust.

So he can certainly understand Isopia's actions, but that doesn't mean he's not hurt by them. Physically hurt, of course (moreso than he's ever been before) but mentally as well. His entire mind feels battered and bruised, as though the Mountain's attacks had smashed into his brain rather than his ribs. Barely a second goes by when he doesn't think about it - about how he'd never seen her so animated, about how it really, genuinely seemed like she hated him. And even Volterra thinks hate is a little too strong an emotion to channel from something that isn't technically his fault. Sure, his seed had created the child Isopia had lost, but that was where his involvement ended (or so he thinks). So dazed by pain had he been at the end of the fight, so intent on trying to stay conscious, he'd hardly noticed Isopia's parting words about Aithniel - they are just a dreamy, blurry daze in his mind. If he could decipher them, it would give him a massive clue as to the Mountain's reasons and mindset.

As it is, he is just as oblivious as he was when he stepped into the Fields to be faced with a raging demigoddess; just as confused, just as wounded.

After a few days, now he feels capable of moving again without exploding into agony, he finds himself heading for the Veins. The flower given to him by the serval rests heavily in his mane, a metaphorical weight upon his shoulders; with it, he can speak to a God, and he is hardpressed to think of a time when he needs godly intervention more. If he was entirely logical and lucid, he would question the sanity of speaking to the father of a mare who had just beaten the ever-living shit out of him, but his torment-addled mind is certainly not thinking logically. It is thinking impulsively, as it always does.

So, with his golden dragon resting on his back - a heaving mass of sullen silence, radiating disgust at the man she is bonded to - he hobbles slowly, slowly, towards the Earth God's shrine. Each step is a little droplet of torture; it sends needles of fire into his two broken ribs, like a starving beast trying to rip its way out of his side. His face is a mask of pain, each line hardened and chiselled as though his features are carved from stone rather than flesh. Even his eyes are like gleaming, cold rubies, vivid against the black and white mask. Vérzés flies low beside him, close to his skin as though to offer physical support.

He arrives at the shrine and halts with a languid groan. Vérzés helps untangle the white lily from his mane and places it gently atop the crumbling rock, before landing neatly beside one massive forehoof and twisting his fingers into the feathers of it as though for comfort. Volterra glances hesitantly at the shrine, and takes a second to ponder whether this is a good idea. Regardless of whether it is or not, he ploughs ahead. "Father Earth?" His voice is not the commanding, authoritative bellow that it usually is; it is wobbly, defeated.