The Tyrant Wyrm was choking on its own black blood, its lower jaw missing, its body a broken mass of torn and tattered scale. It gargled, but it could not speak its ill verses, any more than it could drag itself forwards, or heal itself with the ground beneath it irradiated with Sol's holy fire.
Her foe was languishing in torment... but all the same, it showed no sign of weakening, or giving in. Instead, it feebly dragged itself forwards through the sludge and ash, head tilting back and forth as it glared down into Sol's eyes, and Sol glared fearlessly back, in spite of the hooks she felt trying to grasp into her mind, the way it tried to assault her with psychic malice.
But Sol had plenty of experience with psychic powers, both benign and evil, and its hooks found no purchase in her mind, and its attempts to manipulate her emotion only fueled her righteous fury. She glared at the creature as the creature stumbled towards her... but no matter how much mightier this beast was than the belly-crawling servant lizards that had first attacked their camp, this vermin would die as they did.
It stumbled, then fell into the flames with a broken chuckle: it was only moments more before its body turned to porcelain, and it fell apart into ruin and dust. For as mighty as they were, these Wyrms still had weaknesses she could take advantage of, she saw, and there were other ways to destroy them than simply by piercing the core within their breast, if so their hoof was forced. It was something else Sol would take into account, and something she had noted was useful also against the thralls: creatures she had been warned of too late by Veliuona's minion.
She did not think it was a coincidence that this disciple of the Goddess of Cursed Shades had only warned them of the dangers of the undead that had swept down upon them after the Tyrant Wyrms themselves had attacked. She did not believe in 'coincidence,' and that such a stroke of 'fortune' had not been engineered, after their forces had been conveniently weakened, and before the disciple and Veliuona's forces themselves could be blamed or endangered.
Sol watched the way Veliouna's disciple rounded up her undead to gather the fallen thralls of the Wyrm from where they writhed on the earth, moaning and gargling as they lost their unnatural life. Still, the Disciple wanted to burn them, spoke of dark and terrible magic powering these empty vessels, even though they had been dying and fading from from the moment that she had cut their connection with their master by suffusing the larger Wyrm in golden flames.
There was much to reflect on. Much to consider, and much to think about. The Tyrant Wyrms were far more dangerous... and perhaps Veliuona meant to destroy them sooner than Sol had first anticipated. She would be watchful, and she would be wary, and she would not be foolish enough to take her weaker sibling's advice and offer Veliuona either mercy or reprieve, should Veliuona or her minions show any sign of betraying them in the future.
In spite of all the evil she had seen, Sol still would not believe that the greatest threat to Equestria was not Veliuona, but the Wyrms. And in a strange way, she was right.
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