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.