As ejge, dragons, and shadow creatures fought in the air, every unicorn assisted their allies by forming groups of three and sending out focused balls of magic into the air to explode into multiple fragments which would then explode once more. They created fragmentation flak, and it was surprisingly effective against the dragons who were slow and cumbersome and could not flee fast enough when they saw the balls coming. Twilight and her dragon slayers were readying their weapons while pegasi remained on standby to carry them to the cluster of death currently flying in the air. Several fireballs exploded all around the landscape, damaging it tremendously, but they were simply charring some dirt in comparison to the corpses falling and crashing against both mountainside and hill. The shadow creatures were no exception, but with their varied bodies and sizes, the damages inflicted but their falls were minimal, and there would be no trace of their remains which melted into nothing.
"This is fun!" The dragoness clapped her hooves enthusiastically.
Her joy didn't sit well with the guards who fidgeted nervously in place. What they saw was like a battle between gods-No. It was something else entirely. The Yuhis, taking advantage of the quarreling between both the Royal Ejge and King Dragon, grabbed the golden titan by its wings as it started to fly with them and threw the beast over its shoulders, causing it to crash violently against the ground and create a localized earthquake. The Royal Ejge didn't take too kindly to its duel being interrupted and sliced through the Yuhis. While the serpent phased through the creature, it still howled in pain, and, judging by the way its voice was toned when it did so, it was filled with misery at the situation. For Celestia, it seemed to regret its actions against the King Dragon.
Twilight watched carefully for an opening between the battles and explosions, then it came. "THERE!" she shouted.
The dragon slayers jumped up to grab the pegasi's hooves and fly up into battle. Two thousand more regular soldiers did the same but weren't as fortunate or well-timed as the lavender unicorn and found themselves swatted out of the sky, or worse.
"Oh, there she goes," the dragoness cheerfully pointed out.
Celestia rolled her eyes and groaned in annoyance. "We KNOW, DQ."
Twilight forcefully pulled herself out of the pegasi's grip to land on the neck of a dragon currently battling three ejge and plant her spear into the nape to prevent herself from falling off. The action did not go unnoticed and the dragon howled in pain tried to grab Twilight and throw her off. Unfortunately for it, the ejge were preventing such an action while Twilight carved off the scales and aimed at the exposed flesh below.
"Och. You're a big boy aren't ya?" Twilight said. "I'll be able to make so much with your body."
Several blasts fired from her spear into the neck caused a rather gruesome situation. The best way to describe it would be in saying the dragon couldn't keep its head on with the whole situation. Twilight hitched a ride on one of the ejge and jumped down to stab the leg of yet another adult dragon. On instinct, the giant threw its arm upward, but Twilight couldn't get off with the momentum. She was lodged into its arm. To rectify this, she fired another blast of energy from her spear and blew herself off the dragon. As she didn't really cut off any scales, the attack had no effect on the draconic giant which intercepted Twilight with a full breath of fire at pinpoint range. The unicorn hunkered up into a ball, letting the fire skim off of her armor, and skim it did. The dragon's brief moment of surprise gave the mare the opportunity to stab the dragon's extended snout and shoot through its nasal cavities multiple times. It fell slowly to the ground with a veritable volcano of smoke coming from its insides. Twilight galloped along its body to jump off a wing just before the momentum of it folding upwards was lost.
She took this opportunity to look around and see that her hard work had born her fruit of great quality. The few dragon slayers were slicing their way through the dragons and their teamwork allowed them to do this much better than Twilight currently could despite having her 'superior' equipment. Back upon the mountains, she could see that the Yuhis had grabbed an adult dragon and just crushed it within its grip. It threw the corpse far away from it and hit a few darting ejge in the process. The King Dragon and Royal were currently wrestling; Claw and wing put into it all. They constantly tried to bite at each other and expel their element at the other but failed miserably every time. If it weren't a war, the streams of golden lava and balls of blue, gravity distorting energy would've been a beautiful energy. Below, Celestia and the guards were fighting away the shadow creatures, and Celestia's personal touches to Twilight's style was more useful than she initially thought. The alicorn charge her armor with magic, and with every it performed against an enemy that would connect, a tiny explosion of magic would cause them to dissolve immediately, and if it didn't, the creature would be blasted backwards into its brethren.
The battle lasted for several hours, with the Yuhis often grabbing the Royal Ejge and using it as a weapon to smack the King Dragon away. The hecatonchires grew tired of the battle and wanted to leave, which it did when it saw that the King Dragon and Royal Ejge would not back down and were too embroiled in their rivalry to stop, so it discreetly walked away. Well, as discreetly as a two hundred-and-twenty meter creature could be. This didn't result in less shadow creatures as they were still present and needed to be rid of as soon as was considered possible.
Twilight had killed around fourteen dragons on her own and her dragon slayers had killed around twenty-one total. While they outnumbered her 'kill count', the mare did everything on her own. The ejge were as exhausted from the battle as anyone else, but it didn't matter. As long as the King Dragon and Royal Ejge fought, all parties would fight, but both 'leaders' were heavily wounded. There was one thing Celestia noticed when she had was allowed a brief moment of laxity in her fight: The Royal Ejge would not attack when one of its kind was in the way, but the King Dragon had no such qualms. For someone like Celestia, this seemed like it went further than a deeply ingrained hatred for one another. Twilight and the other slayers used the ejge and dragons to hop towards the King Dragon and harass it as much as they could. The giant didn't respond kindly to this and belched out its stream of plasma in all directions, melting literally everything it touched, but Twilight had trained everypony for this, and they held on.
"We all went through this scenario back at home," Twilight thought to herself. "First, we destroy the wings to hamper its aerial capabilities and further risks of 'bombardment'."
They slayers all gathered around the wings and started chopping away at the thin film but couldn't manage. Twilight and the few other unicorns started blasting away with spear and explosive magics respectively.
"Some of us stay on its head to distract it enough that it can't concentrate on its wings. Too much pain."
What Twilight mentioned was true as well, and the slayers were doing their best to irritate the giant, but the Royal Ejge wasn't going to wait for them to finish and took the opportunity to slice through a single area on the chest of the King Dragon where it had been constantly pounding on, and it cut through the wound cleanly. Its element started compressing the area, but the King Dragon's own element plus its own willpower prevented the element from continuing. Amusingly enough, it hadn't noticed that its wings had torn to shreds and that it was not falling to the ground. The ponies went along for the ride, and with a deafening 'thump' and lifting of dust, the dragon was now on the floor. The giant rolled around the floor to crush the ponies, but they all managed to get away in time to harass the monster even more. Unfortunately, the bombardment the Royal Ejge performed coupled by the spells of the unicorns slowly sapped away at its life, and no matter how much of the land it destroyed and lifted up with its claws, it could not stop the attacks. After a few more minutes of receiving all of the attacks, it fell to the ground. Twilight jumped on its muzzle and glared it straight in the eyes.
"This is what happens when you mess with my future, monster," she spat.
The tired eyes of the King Dragon focused once again and it glared at Twilight, the pale iris of its becoming a blindingly bright, electric yellow. Twilight did not falter, but it was the first time in her life that she felt genuine terror, and it was with this final staredown that the King Dragon finally fell. The dragons and ejge weren't done with their battles, as were the shadow creatures, but the Royal Ejge landed next to its rival with a few hops and skips. It clawed at the monster one last time and lowered itself to 'see' Twilight and observe her briefly. She was still staring at the dead eyes of the creature. Everypony else, on the other hand, were cheering wholeheartedly and throwing their weapons in the air in joy.
"Congratulations, Twilight!" Celestia cheered. "You've saved us all...but...what's going to happen to you now?"
Twilight hopped off the Dragon's snout and landed in front of Celestia. "Well, I guess that, now that my future is no longer, I'll cease to be." She gave a half-hearted smile. "Well, perhaps you won't become the traitor as I expected."
"I won't forget you, Twilight," Celestia smiled back in return.
Everypony waited for the disappearing to happen, but it didn't. The rabble of confusion was stopped by a loud snorting ollowed by hysterical laughter.
"Why am I not disappearing? Why aren't you disappearing?" Twilight asked the dragoness.
She was answered by another snort. "Oh wait, you're serious." The dragoness face-hoofed. "You stupid foal. That's not how time works!"
"How would you know?!"
"Because I've had more than enough time to study it and the works of others' myself. The PRECISE 'smallest' second we entered this timeline created another, which should have ALREADY destroyed us if we're to believe you, so the 'avoiding the past' stuff," the dragoness mocked. "won't do anything."
"Then why are we still here?"
"Because our timeline remains. All we did was create another reality we belong to as well as we're an integral part of its creation." The Dragon Queen's cheerful demeanor suddenly turned darker and more serious. "...But I refuse to have you in my brighter future or part of its creation."
DQ roared loudly and summoned a flock of fresh dragons to come in and attack both dragon and ejge alike, but the Royal Ejge did not budge and watched Twilight carefully. Twilight tried to resume her battle stance, but all of her efforts in fighting made her far too exhausted.
"Ahhh!" The dragoness laughed. "The spirit is willing but the body is weak. Don't worry," she reassured. "The body AND the spirit will become weak in just a second, and I'll do it with this form for the additional bit of humiliation!"
She pounced at Twilight to crush her head with one of her claw-hooves but was intercepted by Celestia's wing armor. The alicorn glared at the dragoness with vicious intent. She wouldn't back down from this. Like it or not, Twilight was one of her ponies now, and she cared immensely for each and every one of them.