Titan and Morgan were ambushed by a Tyrant Wyrm past the edge of the canyon: the black beast fell on them like a living tide, roaring its challenge to the two. They leapt to meet it ahead of their company of knights, with the paladin Morgan so loved dallying behind them, letting the stronger ponies go first.
Titan slammed into the creature, a living cliff that the wave of the beast battered itself uselessly against and was pushed back by, and Morgan attacked the beast from above, harrying it and distracting it. Titan pushed forwards again, to force the creature further back, and yet at the same time Morgan wondered: why did Titan not devastate the beast as she knew he had the power to?
All the same, the Wyrm was no match for them, pushed all the way out of the canyon and into a broad waste. The skirmish became fiercer in the open, but with more room to maneuver, Titan quickly began to outpace the beast, striking at its legs and tail as Morgan smashed off its horns, then blasted away the bony pistons that stood out of its back, and she thought she began to understand what Titan was doing.
The Wyrm fell before them after not much longer, and Morgan and Titan both settled in front of the creature. It lay with legs broken and back bleeding, wounds covering its body... and yet still it grinned at them, mockingly. It was smaller than the other Wyrms they had seen: Morgan would guess it was but a juvenile, and perhaps not of the same ilk as the greater Wyrms they had seen before had been. This one, after all, did not speak in poison words.
But still, Titan approached it, fearless, looking into its hollow-hell eyes before he asked what its intentions were. And to their surprise, the beast laughed, and responded with words that hurt their minds, twisted their souls... and yet even so foreign as they were, could still be understood.
It was here to test them. And that was the only answer it would give, the rest of Titan's questions greeted by laughter until Titan finally asked why the creature had not fought with all its strength. Why it lay in ruin, when they knew that the creatures were capable of putting themselves back together from the power of the earth.
To this, the Wyrm asked derisively why it had not yet been killed. That was its only purpose, to die at their hooves. For it was destruction, it declared, with a terrible pride. It was destruction, to bring and to feel, and that was what it was waiting for. That was what it longed for.
Titan said he would not grant the Wyrm destruction, and the Wyrm, mocking, asked if that meant Titan would sacrifice his sisters, his friends in its place. But Titan only smiled, unafraid and unfettered, before he replied that there would be no sacrifice of those he loved, either. For Titan had a message for the Wyrm to carry to its maker, whom he knew had denned near the Grey Mountains, and he asked the Wyrm to take it there for him.
The Wyrm laughed, and Titan gave his message: the the Wyrms leave this place, and return to whence they had come. That they swallow their need for destruction, or else find a place where their destruction would aid creation. That unlike his sister, he wished to give these Wyrms, whether they were poison or not, one chance to leave, elsewise the next they meet his hoof would be forced to destroy these desolate creatures.
And then, before the Wyrm could mock, or deride, or laugh, Titan picked up the great beast as if it was no lighter than a child's toy, and to the shock of the soldiers who had nervously gathered to watch the parlay, Titan flung the tremendous Wyrm far out of sight, well-beyond the plains they had pass and towards the Grey Mountains on the other side of Equestria. For all the soldiers knew, the Wyrm may very well have landed in that forbidden place to deliver Titan's message.
Titan, satisfied, turned to lead the caravan on, and Morgan laughed, feeling that she had learned much of negotiating that day... and learned all over again the art of mercy, and how to offer peace to even the worst of monsters was not an act of weakness.
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