"Just as there are good people and beasts in the world, so too are there wicked ones, and a particularly terrible one of these was a great dragon called Smaug. He heard of the vast wealth of Erebor, and because dragons are greedy for gold and treasure above all things in this world, he decided he would come down from the north and take it all for his own.
"Dale, being so very close to Erebor and not hidden under a mountain, was the first to face his wrath. Smaug flew in, a red fire-drake so immense that each of his scales was as big as a dinner plate. But Dale was not defenseless. On the highest watchtower there was a dwarvish wind-lance, a great four-armed crossbow as big as a man that could fire the specially-forged black arrows which were sharp and strong enough to pierce even a dragon's impenetrable hide.
"The Lord of Dale, a man called Girion, took to the tower and used the wind-lance to try and shoot Smaug out of the sky, even as fire rained down on the city. Thus he died, but not before one of his arrows struck Smaug's chest and knocked loose a scale, and not before his wife and child could escape. Erebor fell to Smaug that day, and the dwarves were driven out, but there was one black arrow left, and that arrow was passed down along the line of his descendants, each generation keeping it safe for the day when Smaug would crawl back out of the mountain."
This is the part where, traditionally, they would all look at the spot where he kept the black arrow and the story would be over. Now, however, there's an end that isn't completely depressing, so the silence sounds the same as all his previous pauses.
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"Just as there are good people and beasts in the world, so too are there wicked ones, and a particularly terrible one of these was a great dragon called Smaug. He heard of the vast wealth of Erebor, and because dragons are greedy for gold and treasure above all things in this world, he decided he would come down from the north and take it all for his own.
"Dale, being so very close to Erebor and not hidden under a mountain, was the first to face his wrath. Smaug flew in, a red fire-drake so immense that each of his scales was as big as a dinner plate. But Dale was not defenseless. On the highest watchtower there was a dwarvish wind-lance, a great four-armed crossbow as big as a man that could fire the specially-forged black arrows which were sharp and strong enough to pierce even a dragon's impenetrable hide.
"The Lord of Dale, a man called Girion, took to the tower and used the wind-lance to try and shoot Smaug out of the sky, even as fire rained down on the city. Thus he died, but not before one of his arrows struck Smaug's chest and knocked loose a scale, and not before his wife and child could escape. Erebor fell to Smaug that day, and the dwarves were driven out, but there was one black arrow left, and that arrow was passed down along the line of his descendants, each generation keeping it safe for the day when Smaug would crawl back out of the mountain."
This is the part where, traditionally, they would all look at the spot where he kept the black arrow and the story would be over. Now, however, there's an end that isn't completely depressing, so the silence sounds the same as all his previous pauses.