The voice pierces his mind, bids his ears to prick and his titanic body to move automatically towards the sound. He knows the voice, and it rips at the deeply embedded sense of fatherhood inside him. It draws him, papa bear to his darling daughter, and his colossal hooves thunder like a drumbeat across the Throat's dusty sands as he gallops to her. His Valdís, his broken, missing daughter, searched for daily but never rediscovered. She's back, and her father is on his way, her cries like a beacon to the beating heart in his chest.

The ocean that spans the distance between them is no obstacle to the stallion's frantic need to find his child; the key tangled in his mane automatically forms burning wings at his sides, carrying him across the sea until he crashes down on the far side. His eagerness to reach Valdís makes his landing overly heavy and rushed, and he huffs a low blast of pain as one hoof twists against the ground. Limping slightly but caring not a jot, the leviathan places his bulk between his broken child and the deadly drop towards the ocean, shielding the blind girl from any errant steps forwards that would cast her to her death. "Valdís, drágám," croons the black beast, moving towards her and seeking to wrap his great body around her small, ruined one like a coat of armour to shield her from the world. She doesn't smell like the Throat anymore, doesn't smell like him. Maybe that's what caused the Gods to banish her, because her father sure as hell wouldn't have. "Ne sírj, szerelmem, itt vagyok."

He stays close, pressing his warmth against her, trying to reassure with his bulk and presence. "Ön most vissza, hogy minden, ami számít. Hol van az anyád?" His face clouds, a thunderstorm across a clear sky. After what happened with Airlia, he is now extremely cautious about the women he leaves in charge of his children, and Amara had never struck him as the most affectionate or caring of mothers. Volterra had done his best to replace her missing love with his own, but he hadn't been able to prevent his beloved blind, maimed daughter from being cast out of the herd.

Not again. She's back, and he will see to it that she is never alone again.