Down in the ocean there’s a great black hole
Where the birds fly high and the fish swim low
Quick round the pit is a storm of fire
Evil’s strung about the clouds like an ancient ire.

The song is unlike anything he has ever heard. It is haunting, it is demonic, it is terrifying, and yet in the same breath it is alluring. He looks immediately to his dragons, to see their response to the eerie noise, yet they make no reference to it. Indeed, so lacking is their reaction that he is unsure if they've heard it at all. The goliath narrows his eyes and fixes his companions with his penetrating red stare, but still they simply look at him with cocked heads, as though suspecting him of madness.

He opens the tendril that links their minds, and lets the song seep into their brains. They startle, flinging their proud horned skulls high and thrashing their tails across the sand with lethal vigour. "It is dragon," comes Vadir's sharp, feminine voice. The gold has recently found her words, but it is unusual for her to use them. She prefers to converse through emotions and images, although her grasp of language is already far greater than Vérzés. She rears high, flaring her massive golden wings and launching herself into the air, whilst her red brother lingers for a moment longer upon the sand before following her into the heavens.

As a trio, they move. The goliath's colossal hooves crunch through the sand as he marches towards the shore, halting as soon as the salt water begins to wash over the feathers of his feet. Out to sea, there is a typhoon; a roiling storm of twisting waves and thrashing foam. The stallion narrows his eyes, trying to make out the ghostly figure rising in the centre of the whirlpool, but he can only make out a skeletal head and something wicked seeping from it into the water around it. He tries to send the dragons forwards to take a closer look, but the localized winds around the tempest buffet them backwards; they return to Volterra with angry, irritated cries, circling above his head like vultures surveying a carcass.

So from these depths my rage will rise,
Teeth going clack
And pain in my eyes!
Oh feed me a snack
Of your love
Or your morals;
For a token of devotion
I’ll return to the coral.

That particular verse sounds ominous; the stallion's eyes narrow, suspicion intermingling with curiosity as he gazes at the thing at the eye of the storm. "What are you? What is the meaning of your song?" He's been drawn by a queer presence before, several times - each time he's been lead to a strange event, but each time dozens of others heard the summons, too. Today, however, he is alone. No others seem to have heard the cry, and despite himself his heart begins to race; it thunders a stacatto in his chest, and his ears dart forwards.

The song fades, and the storm eases. Volterra narrows his eyes, his suspicion piqued, his muscles tense as though preparing for an attack. Avarice might fuel him when he attends events like these, but he's not entirely stupid and knows not to take anything at face value. For him to be called here - him specifically - there must be something afoot, but the beast has no idea whether it is going to be for good or for ill.

His ears pin as the creature refers to him as a boy, and calls him foolish. As his temper momentarily rises, he wonders if this is precisely what the creature wants; to provoke him, knowing that his anger drives him to make stupid, ill-advised decisions. The gargantuan voice is a collision of noise in his ears, an awe-inspiring cacophony that even Volterra's gravelly baritone cannot match. His skin prickles, each hair rising of its own accord as if in objection to the noise.

But the creature's voice is nothing compared to its reek, the sickening stench that comes from the long, hideous tongue that twists through the air. As it flickers towards the shore, Vérzés unleashes a savage cry and makes to attack, but Volterra calls him back with one sharp lash of his mind. Best not, he tells the red. The stallion tries to close his nostrils to rid himself of the foul odour, but nothing can vanquish the stink which now seems to press into his throat, his guts.

Now, the tongue is beckoning him, and creating a bridge with its rippling mass. Alarm bells ring inside the goliath's head, and for once Vérzés and Vadir are in full agreement that it would be utterly stupid for him to heed the creature's summons. "It is a tongue," they both point out, their scales erect like the hackles of a wolf as they circle and hiss above him; "tongue come from mouth. Mouth eat horse." Volterra has to concede that they both have a point. What's to stop the cloud-obscured demon from simply flicking its tongue and launching him into its mouth, for the easiest meal it'll ever catch? A crafty predator need only study Volterra for a few days to realise his weaknesses - his innate curiosity, his easily-roused temper, and his great pride. This thing is playing on all of them; it even adds a little ode to his arrogance, too, by saying that it doesn't build this bridge for most mortals. Ah, it knows him so well! How he loves to be special, how he absorbs such compliments like a starving man devours food!

Yes, it would be utterly stupid of him to walk across that tongue, given all these things. He could be walking to his death.

Or he could be walking to glory.

He snorts, wary, and frustrated at that wariness. He is usually so bold, so quick to act and so slow to think, and yet his mind is stewing over all the reasons why stepping onto this tongue-bridge would be A Very Bad Idea. But, he ponders, he has his dragons, and he has his magic. Even if the tongue does try to eat him, he'll go down fighting. And maybe, just maybe, the creature holds a great boon at the end of this reeking tongue, a gift to enhance his powers or bolster his battle-strength. How can he turn such an opportunity down?

So he steps onto the bridge, and takes his first few tentative steps towards whatever awaits him.

He is devoured. The tongue fastens around him, dragging him down to the depths; there is no time to fear, no time to fret, no time to contemplate the fragile web of mortality that holds him upon this plane. There is time for nothing, because he is consumed, with nothing but a splash of saliva to mark his final resting place.

The dragons scream, their fury and terror a sight to behold as they launch themselves towards their bonded's slayer. Their eyes are living fire; a blizzard blossoms from the red's mouth and an inferno from the gold's as they plummet towards the water-demon, vanquisher of their mind-partner. But it's gone, and so is Volterra.

Their screams reach a climax, the primal howl of loss and misery.

Until it occurs to them that they'd feel it if the stallion was dead. They'd feel his consciousness rip away from their minds, feel his life leave theirs, and feel their own lives blacken into the abyss. But they can still sense him; distant and weak, but there.

Beneath the waves, the goliath thrashes; he will go down fighting. Death will have to work to take him - and yet he's not dying, this doesn't feel like dying. He's devoured, until he's not. The stinking, reeking spittle covers him head to toe but suddenly he's bursing through the waves, released from the depths of the creature's jaws. He splutters, ears flattened against his head as he staggers and swims to shore, where he is embraced by the joyous croons of both dragons.

And....he is not alone. He looks at his body, and sees it covered with dragonhide. Vérzés gives an approving huff as he sniffs the red scaled armour, deeming it worthy - after all, it is the same colour as him, and therefore more than adequate. Vadir gives a superior snort at the common scale colour, but Volterra cannot take his eyes off the glimmering crimson pelt, as hard as iron and clearly created as armour. Confused and reeking, with his breaths coming in haggard gasps, Volterra staggers away with his prize draped proudly across his powerful frame. He has been blessed, and he looks with narrowed eyes into the patch of ocean that held the demonic creature as he makes his slow and stinking path away from the beach.