Vérzés looks at Hubris with a tilted head, wondering why the bronze dragon appears to be having some sort of a fit. Volterra pays neither dragon any mind, because he's fully focused on Isopia. There's a lingering sense of loss in his mind, like he's missed out on an argument or at the very least a few sharp words - he hadn't expected the first words she says to him after what happened to be about Kisamoa, even if his had been. For some reason, he'd thought she would be the first to mention events, but he quickly realises what a stupid assumption that had been. He responds in kind, although the slight twitch of his muscles and bewildered flickering of an ear imply that he's concerned. "You intend to do as he asks?" he replies.

Meanwhile, Vérzés' complete focus on Hubris has caused him to suspect something odd. Like his bonded, the red isn't the most perceptive of creatures, but the bronze's behaviour is enough to incite his curiosity. When Hubris gestures for him to follow, the red does so without a second thought, leaping from Volterra's back and darting through the trees after his bronze friend.

The Indomitable hardly notices the absence of weight on his back, because Isopia is answering his second - and vastly more important - question. Fine. The answer is like a slap to his face, and his expression twists into one of sudden hurt. How can she be fine? Did what happened mean nothing to her? Surely he couldn't have misjudged the situation so badly - he'd seen the rage, the pain, inside her that day, and he's quite sure she's not that good an actress. "You're fine?" he repeats flatly, his voice guarded and quite clearly suspicious. "How can you be fine? Kis hollo, you can talk to me, you know you can. I think we need to discuss what happened." His gravelly voice is softer now, as though talking to a frightened kitten; this is his one golden chance to speak to her, to sort things out once and for all. Perhaps it's naiive of him to think that one conversation can make them right again, can take them back to where they were, but if Volterra doesn't have hope then he doesn't have anything.

His focus on Isopia is so single-minded that the tendril of thought with his dragons is cut down to the thinnest of slivers. Vadir is hunting, so there's nothing of importance there, and Vérzés is with Hubris....no, that's also unimportant, the two are probably just sorting out their own differences after the fight. Little does he know that at that precise moment, Hubris is imparting something on the red dragon that almost makes Vérzés fall from the sky with the sheer shock of it, the raw horror of the information. Ophelia take her memories. Not remember baby, not remember Volterra. The red barely catches himself on his leathery wings as the weight of the revelation hits him. He chirps a thanks, but knows as well as Hubris that they can't stay away for too long. He follows the bronze back to their bondeds, his mind spinning, desperately trying to compute.

He drops onto Volterra's back with a meaningful grunt, but the stallion doesn't even notice. "Need to tell you something," he says to his bonded, but the beast simply gives a dismissive shrug of his shoulders. Not now, Vérzés, he replies, further cutting down the tendril of their bond. He can't afford to be distracted now, not when this could be the most important conversation he'll ever have with Isopia.

"It important", whines the dragon, wrapping one paw around a chunk of Volterra's mane and tugging it insistently. The behemoth gives a sharp hiss and wiggles his back to try and hush the red. I said not now. Perhaps he's being overly dismissive, but he really doesn't have the time for whatever trivial nugget of information Vérzés is going to give to him. No, it's far more important that he have his wits about him here, because Isopia is speaking again; she asks if he will help with the tasks, and he nods gratefully. This, he's assuming, is an invitation for the two of them to go off alone and discuss things, so naturally he agrees. "Of course." Truthfully he'd had no intentions of being Kisamoa's bitch, but talking to Isopia is vastly more important than his moral misgivings.

"Shall we?" he rumbles, moving so as to leave the crowd and go deeper into the Rotunda in search of logs to clear. Out of the corner of one red eye he sees Hubris waving at him, as though the dragon has never met him before - odd, he thinks, but unimportant. Just as unimportant as Vérzés' now frantic tugging on his mane, which he continues to studiously ignore whilst the red dragon whimpers anxiously. Vérzés looks helplessly to Hubris, trying to tell the bronze with a look that he's struggling to get through to his bone-headed bonded, and subtly redoubles his efforts to break through Volterra's mental wall so he can deliver his news.

I did what I thought I had to. The response stops Volterra in his tracks; he's fully immobile for a moment as he digests the words, and applies the brakes to his long stride with so much force it sends Vérzés faceplanting into his neck with a yelp. I did what I thought I had to. What on earth does that mean? Did she think she had to abort their child because it would never have a dedicated father (he still tries not to think about whether she'd actually caused the fight that miscarried their foal, he doesn't want to know, as cowardly as that is)? Did she think she had to beat seven bells out of him in order to punish him for his esteemed sins?

Or is it something deeper, something the mentally-challenged stallion cannot possibly understand? He schools his face into neutrality, but all these questions are bouncing around his skull like the aforementioned nest of lemmings.

And now it is over. It is done with and we can all move on. Fuck, that's cold. Even for her, that's some emotionless shit right there, and the leviathan remains stood stock still as he computes the information. "Oh," is all he can say. Is that it? Is that the closure he'd been hoping for? He hadn't thought it would happen like that. Just those few words, so abrupt, such a statement, as though she's referring to a mundane act of herd politics rather than the life of a child and the death of a relationship. He doesn't know what to think. Arguably it's a good thing that she's so willing to move on with seemingly no ill-will held towards him, but he's also slightly wounded at the notion that he'd carried around his grief, misery and self-loathing for months since the fight whereas she'd seemingly brushed it under the carpet with the minimum of fuss.

No, he decides. They can't simply leave it at that. There's far too much to talk about, far too much that needs sorting. He can't accept this hollow, fragile peace between them, when it's clearly so easy to shatter. It'd be so damn easy to take the simple option and just accept the fragile olive branch she seems to be offering, but it doesn't feel right to just hide what happened until it will one day rear its ugly head again. They have to resolve this once and for all, and the behemoth quickly picks up his pace again to fall into step beside the Mountain. "But what does that mean for us? Kis hollo, I think we need to talk more about this. What happened, what you did, what I did...."

He pauses for a moment, debating how far to go, how much information to give out. "After the fight, kis hollo, I spoke with your father. He helped clear some things up for me, explained what I'd done to upset you so much. You know me, I wouldn't know an answer even if it hit me between the eyes." He forces a laugh, but it's humourless even to his ears. "And I understand now. He also...told me what happened. About...about the child." He pauses, scanning her face for a reaction; a frisson of grief, a spasm of hatred. He doesn't elaborate further, deciding to allow her to say what she needs to say before he accidentally puts his hoof in it.

They've arrived at the trees, and it's a blessed relief from drama central for the Indomitable to be able to scrutinise the situation with his expert eye. Some fallen trees block out the sun, creating a little microclimate in the area beneath, and Volterra nods his answer to the mare's words. Talking about fucking trees definitely has a sense of prolonging the inevitable, but a bit of manual labour may help focus them both. "I could use my magic to disrupt the bases of the fallen trees, which should make it easier for us to move them out of the way." This, working as a team, reminds him of their prior meetings - saving forest animals, making hot-tubs. It brings a wry smile to his face, and more than ever he hopes that things can be resolved between them. She's such a massive part of both his childhood and his adult life, and being with her now again has only helped remind him how much he's missed her.

Meanwhile, inside his head Vérzés is throwing his full mental weight at the walls Volterra has erected to keep him out. He's silent and still upon his bonded's back, eyes closed and muscles twitching with concentration as he launches mental barrages at the blockage, hunting desperately for a crack that he can force himself through to deliver his news. He does not want to tell Volterra what has happened, for fear the stallion may lose his mind completely, but it's not information that he can rightly keep to himself. So he attacks the Indomitable's wall like a dragon possessed, searching for any way through.

Suddenly, there's a whir of air as Hubris zooms past him, and it begins to rain tree. Acorns, dead twigs and branches bounce off Volterra's head and back, the larger ones leaving bruises in their wake including one between the ears that makes him see stars, and they pepper Vérzés with a healthy dose of greenery as well. The leviathan gives a surprised snort, instinctively darting to the side to escape the bombardment of foliage, and despite his own confusion Vérzés seizes upon the gilt-edged chance offered to him. His bonded's mental walls are temporarily lowered by the melee of Hubris-induced branches and nuts, and it gives the smallest opportunity for the red to blast his way into Volterra's distracted mind.

He sees a crack in the Indomitable's armour, exploits it, dives through it with the javelin of his own consciousness. The path ahead is clear to him now, and his mental voice rings out into Volterra's head: "HUBRIS SAID -"

With a muffled thud of flesh, Isopia's shoulder collides with Volterra's. The stallion, already unbalanced from his own movement sideways, stumbles heavily, and the sudden jerking of his back sends Vérzés sprawling with an indignant yowl. The dragon manages to catch himself on his leathery wings and soar upwards with several clacks of displeasure, but the opportunity to impart his information has gone - no sooner has Volterra righted himself than his mental walls are up again, and Vérzés' futile scratchings at them yield no joy. The red screeches his fury, landing on the brute's back and banging his little fists on the black flesh in a puerile temper tantrum born of his utter frustration. He looks hopelessly over to Hubris, praying that the bronze will come up with another equally ingenious way to distract their two bondeds and allow him access to the Indomitable's steel-gilded mind.

Volterra's head is spinning from the blow between his ears and also the fact that his flesh is tingling where Isopia's shoulder touched it. It is like the ghost of a kiss or the warm itch of a fresh burn, a sensation that the stallion has missed so damn much that he wants to lean into her again, press himself flush against her side and pray that his body's muscle memory manages to retain the feeling for the rest of his life. Alas, he cannot. She's scolding her dragon, and the Gladiator takes the opportunity to shake himself free of the pine cones, leaves, twigs and all other tree-related paraphernalia that litter the top of his body. The large bronze dragon has done a pretty great job of decimating half of the tree - indeed, Volterra feels like he's wearing at least a quarter of Kisamoa's obstacles in his mane alone - but there is still work to be done. "It's fine," he rumbles to the mare's apologies, but his own mind is dazed with what the hell has just happened. Why didn't the Mountain respond to the question, and what on earth possessed Hubris to make a kamikaze flight into the canopy? Surely no creature bonded to a logical mind such as Isopia's could even consider the idea of an ill-thought-out, reckless assault as Hubris just had.

To his great frustration, he doesn't know how to steer the conversation back to what they were just discussing. It doesn't feel right to suddenly go so, you were saying? after the frisson of heat that had just passed between them, a spectre of the old them. She must have felt it too, surely. How could she not be affected by such bodily contact? During the fight, their touching was minimal due to the largely dragon-and-magic orientated nature of it, which means their last meaningful contact was that blessed day when they wrapped their bodies together in the most intimate way two beings can possibly do. Had she, like him, gained a spasm of those beautiful, cherished memories, of carnal pleasure mixed with soft, loving caresses and whispered nothings?

Either way, the moment to talk has passed, it seems. The titan is left deeply frustrated by the lack of answers, but they will have to wait until the time is right again. "Let's get these trees moved." Maybe once they've done their job, exhausted themselves with the effort, the conversation might drift naturally back to where it was headed. Volterra hopes so; the sense of unfinished business is so heavy in his mind, so frustrating, that he feels like slamming his hooves into the trees just to have something to focus on.

Summoning his structure magic, Volterra bids the ground beneath the fragmented roots of one of the trees to lift. It causes the remaining roots holding the tree in place to rip and snap, and its great weight presses downwards until the only things stopping it crashing to the ground are the twisted branches of other trees. The behemoth moves forwards, scrutinising the trapped tree and pondering how best to dislodge it from the cage of its living brethren, thankful for the momentary distraction from his annoyance.

Because of this determination - now focused on the objectionable trees - Volterra misses Isopia's awestruck expression, instead only turning back to her when she gives a small cough. He turns just in time to see her transform into her massive dragon form, and the sight of it makes him shudder. Not out of fear - although it may seem that way to the mare - but because of the sudden assault of memories that has slammed him from every angle. Her flying with him hanging loosely in her talons, his terror at the sudden lack of ground beneath his feet; the landing, and what followed. The last time he saw her draconic self, it was followed by the happiest event of his life. Now? It brings only sorrow, and a heavy sense of what might have been.

Dragon-Isopia flies upwards and begins to dislodge the branches with her hands. Yes, that is certainly a useful way to move them, and the stallion nods his approval. Using his own magic, Volterra begins to move the roots away from the other fallen trees too, so the Mountain can move them at her leisure. In this manner, it shouldn't be long before the trees have been shifted to expose the ground to the sun again, which should hopefully meet with Kisamoa's approval.

On his back, meanwhile, Vérzés peeks through his fingers, an idea formulating in his mind. Innocently he leaps upwards, gliding lazily towards Isopia and using his dragon body language to say "I help." He dives towards one of the branches poking out of Isopia's bough that is helping to stop the tree from moving, a reasonably large branch but one that he manages to chisel off with his claws and a handy blast of ice breath. Holding the heavy limb of wood in his arms, the red dragon flies forwards as though about to deposit it a safe distance away. Subtly, the ruby reptile suddenly releases his grip with a mentally exclaimed "whoopsie!" to his bonded, and the branch drops through the air like a wooden bullet directly towards Volterra.

The stallion startles, darting to the side, but the branch crashes down onto his back with an explosive cacophony of noise. The beast snarls and pins his ears as pain rockets up his spine, but his mental walls drop at the agonising distraction, giving Vérzés a window of opportunity once again....and this time, he will not let it slip. Through the hole he barges, holding back nothing, sending his words like an arrow into Volterra's gaping mind.

"HUBRIS SAID THAT MOUNTAIN GOT MEMORIES TAKEN AWAY AFTER FIGHT. SHE NOT REMEMBER YOU, SHE NOT REMEMBER BABY."

The branch rolls off the Indomitable's back with an inexorible thud, but he hardly notices. He is stood, frozen solid, a blackened statue staring numbly up at his dragon. It starts with a ringing in his ears, warning bells sounding everywhere in his mind as he digests this information, this life-changing information. His heart races, the throbbing pain in his back ignored completely.

"What?" he says aloud, not caring to keep his voice over their bond. The words make no sense - it can't be true. Vérzés swoops sadly down and lands on his withers, wrapping his hands around a section of thick mane like he used to when he was a hatchling, a gesture of mutual reassurance. "I sorry." "You're lying," comes the mammoth's snarled reply, feeling his temper rising. Yes, that's better. Temper is good. Temper is safe. This knowledge can't be true, and he can't make himself think about it - it's better to get angry at his lying little shit of a dragon. Why is the red doing it? To try and drive a wedge between them? He must be jealous, but how dare he!

"Not lying," says Vérzés timidly. He's frightened; frightened of the beast that he may be about to unleash, frightened of what Volterra might do or say when the realisation hits him. Like Hubris, he's frightened of the devastation if the leviathan fights back, this time; they could kill each other. The second Volterra's denial lifts, the storm is going to hit, and it's going to tear the world apart.

"YOU'RE LYING," roars the stallion, slamming one massive hoof against the ground as he feels the final threads of his temper fray away. Why is the red doing this? Why must he lie? "She wouldn't do that. She's better than that - we're better than that." His face is twisted into a snarl, his iron walls of denial rippling around the soft centre within - the tiny bud of belief, the horrible, heart-wrenching sensation that he knows his companion is telling the truth. That it makes sense, that all her behaviour fits in with what his dragon is telling him....no! He won't let himself believe that, because it can't possibly be true. He knows Isopia would never do such a thing, knows it with a belief that fills his heart with resolve and determination.

He forces his voice to calm, looks up at the Isopia-dragon in the trees and addressing both her and Vérzés. "Of course she remembers me." Don't be so stupid, is what lingers, unsaid, between them. His voice is loud, confident, but it holds a question, demands a reassurance from her; she'll laugh, say of course she remembers him, and they'll go about their business. She would never forget him.

Is it so wrong of him to think that the Mountain would follow the same thought processes? That she would understand that having your heart broken is better than it never being whole in the first place?

"Sorry," comes the humble murmur from Vérzés, and the Indomitable responds with a simple growl. He has nothing to say to the crimson liar nestling upon his back, no thoughts or emotions to spare for a creature who would make up something so horrific for the shits and giggles of it. Given the red's individual insight into Volterra's mind, he would have expected better. He could almost understand Vadir making such a thing up, due to her dislike of Isopia and the fact that she is, to put it simply, a complete bitch, but Vérzés? He'd thought better of him. He'd thought their bond was deeper than that.

You do seem to be hard to forget. That is not an answer. That is not an answer. The goliath lifts his head, his face twisted into a frown as the dragon-woman lands in front of him. He had expected her to roll her eyes and inform him that of course she remembers him, but her words do not fill him with the confidence and relief he'd expected to flood through him. The question hangs, unanswered, and doubt begins to creep through his head. "Kis hollo," he says, and his voice is unusually soft, tinged with desperation and edged with anxiety. "You....you do know who I am, don't you?" A tilt of that mammoth head, the eyes strangely darkened by the worry that has slipped upon him like a thief in the night. His dragon cannot possibly be telling the truth, can he?

On his back, Vérzés glances hopelessly up to Hubris, chirps sadly, then covers his eyes with his paws.

Volterra ignores her attempt to end the conversation - he can't leave it like this, plagued with more questions than answers. "Tell me you remember us." He tries to look her dead in the eye, his gaze unwavering despite the fact his heart suddenly seems to be trying to beat its way out of his chest, despite the great knot that has formed in his gut and twisted its way through every nerve in his body.

His ears begin to ring. Numbness spreads through his body, paralyzing his face into open-eyed nothingness. His heart ceases its hammering and drops its rate so much that the stallion would assume it had stopped altogether if it wasn't for the fact that he's still alive, still breathing. Still conscious, still able to stand here and digest those two words that have just cut through him like a knife, those two words that hurt more than any blow he's ever taken.

"You....don't." He repeats it tonelessly, as though doing so will lessen the impact that her words have had on him. Saying that it is like a kick to the gut is too simple, too mild to adequately describe what he's feeling. Comparing this sensation to a kick is like comparing a light drizzle of rain to a raging tempest, one that annihilates everything in its path and leaves nothing but raw, exposed flesh behind it. It's abject pain, it's sorrow that sinks through the skin and enters the marrow beneath. It's disbelief, desperation, dismay, disgust, devastation. Betrayal.

Those are all emotions that he's not accustomed to feeling. Emotions that he's afraid of, that he doesn't know how to cope with, how to survive. So he takes the coward's way out and does what he always does - he channels all these unwanted feelings into something that he can control, that he can survive, that doesn't allow him to focus on the fact that his heart inside his chest is slowly breaking in two.

Anger.

Vérzés knows what's coming, feels the first ebbings of fury pass from Volterra's mind into his. He squawks, flings himself from the Indomitable's back and flies towards Hubris, landing on the branch beside the bronze and trying to nestle closely against the larger dragon, seeking comfort in him and trying to offer it, too.

"You forgot me." Still the mammoth man's voice is listless, monotone, seemingly devoid of emotion, but suddenly his eyes are glowing with molten flame, his ears ramming backwards and his muscles hulking as though about to strike. Attacking with his body, however, is not his intention. "How....how could you? How could you get rid of everything we've been through? Did I mean that little to you that you'd rather erase me than deal with everything you felt?" There's a voice in his head that calls him a hypocrite, because isn't he doing precisely the same by hiding his hurt behind a wall of anger? No, he tells himself. The two are worlds apart.

Now he's off, there's no stopping him. There is no part of him that contemplates the stupidity of shouting at a massive dragon, no part of him that considers the consequences. This rage is born of something new, something so damn agonising that it puts all his other seemingly mundane temper tantrums to shame and which utterly removes any sense of self-preservation. He'd never considered before that the different emotions he channels into anger make different levels of rage - that this betrayal makes a fury far more acute, far more intense, than anything created by a less important emotion like humiliation. This is like a white fire caused by oxyacetylene, a thousand times hotter than the usual flames roused by wood or coal; this is so much more intense, because it's created by something so much more painful.

"Was it just me who thought we were worth more than that? Am I the only one stupid enough to cherish what we have far more than anything else in my life? Is it just me who would do anything to keep these memories, the good and the bad, rather than go out of my way to remove them?" There's an ache in his chest now. Maybe he's having a heart attack; imagine dying in front of her! Maybe, though, it's just the physical manifestation of heartbreak. "It hurts, Isopia. Grief hurts. Loss hurts. Heartbreak hurts. But you can't just run from it. You can't keep hiding from it. Without the bad, the good is worthless. If you remove the bad, you don't fucking deserve the good."

He doesn't think to notice that this is the first time he's ever used her real name. The first time he's ever used that piece of information, that close-held secret that she never told him. He'd never imagined that the first time he said her name, it would be as part of a tirade like this. "What does it say about us if you'd sooner remove all memory of me than face your feelings? What was the point of it all if you just run away at the first bump in the road?" His eyes flash and he desperately wrestles with his muscles to try and stop himself from striking, from attacking as his body tells him to do. Despite everything, he'll never hurt her - even though this is not her, this is some empty husk of a woman who wears her face.

The giant snorts, a gesture of disgust, of agony. He needs to walk away, to leave before this escalates further. There's nothing to be gained from continuing to rant and rave, one man against the crushing darkness. "I knew you were a lot of things, but I never thought you were a coward." The words slip out, unbidden, a last riposte before the end of this fight, this war of words.

He growls deep in his throat and begins to turn, each muscle quivering, wrestling against the odd burning behind his eyes. There's time for one last blow, one final twist of the sword, something spiteful, something to try and lessen the pain in himself by giving it to her.

"Go to hell, Isopia."

It's not said angrily, more...despairingly. He doesn't mean it, beneath the veil of righteous anger he's wearing. Maybe he'll regret this later when the eruption has faded and the volcano lies dormant again, when he's had time to think and digest the emotions she's given him. Right now, though, he's done with her. For once, it's going to be him leaving her, and with a sense of grim satisfaction, he hopes it hurts. He begins to walk away, his back tight and tense, his stride forceful and propelled by misery.

Vérzés hums low in his throat, his tail twitching anxiously. "Sorry", he mumbles to Hubris, then takes to the wing and follows the retreating figure of his bonded.