The creatures fell upon them, laughing; laughing at their pain, laughing at their fear, laughing at their weakness. They were all exhausted from the hurried and long marches, from the violent campaign they had fought across Equestria... and now the foe was taking advantage of that, and moving to destroy them in one vicious swoop.
Two powerful, large Wyrms rushed them, and a third lingered in the background, watching, waiting, and calculating: it too was making a move towards them, but it allowed the other Wyrms to rush ahead. And these were no small Wyrms, nor were they playing games: they swept in, breathing death and roaring their poisons... but by now, Sol's strong will had begun to build a resistance to those toxic words, even with the weaponized hate they tore at her soul with.
She roared orders over the Wyrms: Veliuona's minions surged forwards to slow the beasts and allow the mortal troops to evacuate. Titan unslung his mighty shield, and leapt into the fray, using it to bait the Wyrms into attacking him, but their claws could find no purchase on this rare and special artifact of Titan's.
Morgan flew overhead, and struck at the Wyrms with dark magic... but then was blasted out of the air by a terrible psychic force, a hell-mind that Sol felt the malice of even from where she stood. Morgan fell limply... but she was saved by a dark familiar of Veliuona's, the shade whisking the mare from battle, and Sol was forced to give the Goddess of Cursed Shades her grudging thanks.
Sol knew what had to be done. Powerful or not, the Wyrms battering forwards were only distractions and pawns. As she called upon her magic, she did not look at them: instead, she looked at the massive Wyrm that followed in their wake, striding into the battlefield like a king of war. She sent holy flame at the beast... but it laughed at the blast, the powerful magic doing frighteningly little.
They would have to strike at its heart, and hope that it, like its brethren, shared the weakness. But as this Wyrm began to speak, its verses clouded Sol's mind, made it impossible for her to give orders; not that they would have been heeded, anyway, as the dead screamed in pain, joined by the howls of the living. And the smaller Wyrms began to push forwards, eager, vicious, and hungry...
Sol saw a rare thing that day: she saw her brother, Titan, show true anger. He tore his shield from his foreleg, and in a fit of rage, flung it sharply at one of the Wyrms with such force it smashed through its chest like nothing but brittle brick, and the Tyrant Wyrm was knocked head-over-heels: but by the time it landed on its back, it had already become nothing more than muck and porcelain. The other Wyrm did not care about the ferocity of the attack on its brethren... but their master, the lord-Wyrm, paused in his speech, and the pause was long enough for Sol to summon up her power - more than she wanted to call upon, more than she wanted to reveal, and even knowing it would leave her weak, and vulnerable - and summoned down a star that fell from the heavens, crashing through the head of the mighty Wyrm.
She knew it would not kill the beast, but the king-wyrm was disoriented by the loss of its head, its lower jaw unable to speak with no skull attached above it. It was only able to gurgle and howl, as Veliuona's forces surged forwards again, swarming the servant-Wyrm that remained and forcing it down under sheer strength of numbers, binding its jaws, attacking the pistons of bone on its back, bleeding it dry of the mire-blood that gave it strength.
And Veliuona herself summoned death-magic, the likes of which Sol had rarely seen, to crack and rip rip and shred the front of the lord-Wyrm, hewing through its armory scales and plate-like breastbone. And as it weakened, confused and furious, Titan tore loose a boulder and flung it with all his might, shattering bone, and crushing the soul-cage beneath that served as this thing's hideous heart.
The lord-Wyrm died as the other Wyrms did: dissolving, and yet laughing, as if all of this was naught but a joke. And even as the remaining Wyrm was suffocated under sheer numbers, as it died beneath the deathless servants of the Goddess that had, today, earned Sol's respect in spite of her suspicion... there was little feeling of victory, but instead, a sense that this cruel ambush had been yet another test... and there were worse things still waiting for them in the times ahead.
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