She shrugs. She just...shrugs.

It would be so much easier if she just raged at him. Rage, he can understand. Rage, he can conquer. He knows it, he feels it, he owns it. He can't handle this...this coldness. If she's angry with him, why can't she not just tell him? Why can she not take it out on him with kicks and bites, things that his stupid, stupid brain can actually understand?

Why does she have to use nuances and subtleties when she knows quite well that he doesn't speak that language? Why can't she just tell him what he's done wrong?!

Anguish burns through him, meeting his confusion and igniting into a great fire of worry. She's looking at him, looking at him through eyes that he cannot read, with the face of a stranger. Why would I want to know? His ears lace backwards, flat to his skull, his own face a picture of abject dismay and confusion. "Because..." But the words don't come. Because she's her? Because she's his? Because she deserves to know what he's been up to, what he's done, what he's created? Nothing, she says. He snorts his derision - clearly there's something, else she wouldn't be acting like this. He shifts, readjusting his weight, trying to hold himself in a way that somewhat negates the size difference between them - he feels mentally small enough without needing to feel physically inadequate as well.

She flares her wings, steps backwards. He shifts automatically towards her, neck arching, muzzle extending to try and touch, to make it better - but then she's turning, she's leaving, and she's throwing a dagger at his heart.

The others had bounced off the hard armour of his obliviousness, but this one....ah, this one hits where it hurts.

That's not my name.

The giant flinches. He physically flinches. He's suffered some horrendous wounds in his time on the battlefield, but nothing - nothing - hurts as much as that. She throws it back in his face, the thing he's known her by since they were both just children, the thing he used even when he knew her real name so that he would spare her blushes, preserve her secret.

That's how he knows it's over. Because it's the most hideous and hurtful thing she could possibly do - take away that one thing they have that's special. That is the name he uses for her, nobody else - it's his own little private, personal ownership of her, their little secret, a little kernel of them-ness. And she's ripped it apart.

She's ripped him apart.

Hubris snatches the Isopia figurine and neither gold nor red motion to stop him - they simply hum their lament, arching their bodies into pictures of sorrow. They know something has changed today, that something has ended. For a second, Volterra stands where he is, stunned, watching mare and dragon depart. He is dumbstruck, numb, unable to comprehend what's just happened.

Then it hits him.

The beast roars. It is a hideous sound, a great feral howl of utter hopelessness. The red mist descends, and he throws out a hoof with a savage snarl - he shatters the little sculpture of himself into a thousand pieces. Bits of him lay scattered across the ground, in every way.

He launches himself from a halt into a full-fledged gallop, his colossal hooves a thunderous drumroll on the soil. He runs until he cannot breathe, he runs until his muscles scream and his dragons huddle together for comfort from the force of his ire - and that in itself is an achievement as they loathe one another. He runs until it doesn't hurt any more, until the only thing he feels is the raging fire inside his body, until he's as far away from that place as he can possibly be.

He runs until he forgets.