Fluttershy spared a moment to think that this wasn't really the way she liked to fight, but at that moment, she did not have the luxury of choosing her methods.
So she channeled Rainbow Dash and decided to attack with overwhelming power and momentum.
Fluttershy flapped her wings and spun her forehooves at the same time, creating a mini hurricane around herself to fly forward at extremely high speeds (unless you were Rainbow Dash, in which case it would merely count as "not slow").
The enemy's response to that was again releasing a multitude of lasers from her artifact and shooting them at Fluttershy. But the Knight already understood the strength of those lasers, so with a twist of weather magic, she covered herself in a coating of hyper dense water, which blocked enough of the power of the lasers that Fluttershy only got scratched.
And then she was on top of the enemy, and the battle once more became very hard to follow.
Fluttershy flew around like a hummingbird, aided by her personal hurricane, and she attacked from all angles using every weather magic attack one could think of. She threw lightning like it was candy, formed spikes and hard balls of ice to attack, and even managed to make cutting winds.
The enemy was put on the backstep, having to use her artifact more actively for defense, blocking most of the attacks with directed lasers and letting the automatic defenses handle those that got through. But the pegasus obviously knew that she couldn't let herself keep being overwhelmed like this, so she slowly charged the magic of her artifact while she kept up her defense.
And then she revealed a new trick.
Forcing all the stored energy into a single point, she created a laser blade at the end of her artifact at the same time as she was swinging it.
Fluttershy was too committed to her attacks to dodge, and she felt extreme danger from that attack, so she erupted with power once more, focusing every bit of strength she could muster into the aura defense of her right forehoof, using it to block the blade.
The exceedingly dangerous attack still managed to score a deep cut on Fluttershy's hoof, but it was indeed blocked, and it had taken a lot of power to do so, causing Fluttershy's stream of attacks to stop.
The enemy pegasus took advantage of that by releasing a counter attack, a stream of lasers that Fluttershy easily blocked with more water, but that bought enough time for the enemy to ride her tower and fly away at high speed, and she was also charging energy for more extra powerful laser attacks.
Fluttershy flew after her, and when the enemy started shooting her barrier breaking laser attacks, Fluttershy recklessly spread weather magic in the air, forcing wind and water to push her around and dodge the extremely power shots. One, two, three and Fluttershy caught her.
Then she smiled and shifted her own weather magic in a specific way, drawing all the magical energy that had been charged in the air through the battle towards herself. And it all came in the most efficient manner possible, as lightning bolts.
At that point, both Fluttershy and her opponent were hit by the magical equivalent of twenty lightning bolts, all at once.
After an instant that felt like an eternity, Fluttershy opened her eyes and smiled. She was feeling pain all over her body, but her enemy was unconscious. The tower artifact had been destroyed trying to block all that power, and the remaining energy was still enough to win the battle. Fluttershy's amazing resilience had won the day.
However, she never saw the spell coming from behind.
-0-
Pinkie's opponent knew that he was at a disadvantage, so he decided to change things up. Charging even more magic into his spear, he dove at the ground and managed to plunge right into it like it was liquid, thanks to the magic of his artifact.
Sensing danger, shadow Pinkie drew the other Pinkie to her, and the two of them charged their magic to prepare for anything while falling the last few meters to the ground.
And it was an appropriate response, as the enemy pegasus released a powerful shockwave from his place beneath the ground, causing an eruption of rock to fly into the sky like a volcanic eruption composed completely of solids.
Adapting at the last moment, Pinkie fused with her shadow, creating an aura of dark power around herself, and then she punched through the numerous heavy projectiles with powerful blows, but this time it was the enemy who had used the lack of visibility as an advantage, and in a near plagiarization of Pinkie's earlier attack, the pegasus flew up at high speed and swung the spear into Pinkie, hitting her with a shockwave.
The Knight had managed to focus her defensive strength at the last moment to receive the blow, but the attack was still strong enough to send her flying into the ground at high speed, and it even canceled out her shadow fusion.
Still, Pinkie didn't stay stunned for more than a moment before charging magic into her shadow again, making it sink into the ground and starting shooting earth spikes at the enemy at high speed.
He blocked them with sweeps of his spear, but Pinkie took advantage of his distraction to jump straight at him again.
She hit him with two punches, one in the chest, making him spit blood again, and the second at the base of his wings, foiling his flight.
The two fell down from the sky in a twisting tumble, Pinkie continually attacking to prevent the enemy from escaping, while he kept using short range shockwaves to block her punches and try to dislodge her from him.
The two hit the ground and rolled, and the pegasus blindly stabbed with his spear... piercing right through Pinkie's chest.
She gasped... and then reached forward and grabbed his shoulders. And smiled.
"Psyche!"
Before the pegasus could understand what she meant, the situation had changed. Now he was stabbing shadow Pinkie, while the real Pinkie was lying flattened in the ground like a real shadow. And an instant after that, the situation changed again, and this time the pegasus was stabbing the ground, uselessly piercing the shadow, while the real Pinkie was grabbing him.
It seemed like Pinkie didn't need chaos magic to do weird things. Shadow Switch was definitely a bizarre ability.
"Nighty-night..." Pinkie whispered, rearing her head back.
And then she headbutted the opponent with skull-cracking force.
He fell to the ground unconscious, and Pinkie felt her chaos magic come back as his artifact deactivated. She charged magic in a punch and destroyed the spear, before jumping away at full strength as the Pinkie Sense warned her of 'DANGER!'.
But it was still not enough, as the powerful spell covered too much area for her to escape.
-0-
Rarity reassessed her situation as she used another flash step to open up the distance between herself and her opponent. She used a few carefully controlled thrown darts to sneak through the moving shields, only to learn that the enemy was hiding herself behind a powerful barrier of invisible shields that could not be used for offense, but were so resilient that no ordinary attacks could break through. And considering that ease that attack was having in destroying the forest, it would be dangerous to be hit by it.
Rarity thought of two plans that she could use to be able to win the fight. One of them safe, the other dangerous. She decided to try the safe plan first, and try the dangerous one if it didn't work.
Of course, the safe plan was rendered much less safe when the enemy realized that she needed some ranged attacks or Rarity would simply continue maintaining her distance, and she subsequently started shooting razor sharp bits of shield at high speeds in the direction of the Knight.
Rarity used a spell to create a water shield in front of her. It was only enough to slow down the attacks, not stop them, but it was enough to allow her to block them with her sword. Rarity kept moving to keep her distance from the enemy and still maintained her water shield in between the two.
At the same time, she was preparing her attack. She was currently doing a lot of things at once (using the water shield, controlling her sword, doing her flash steps) but the part that caused the most strain was still the attack. It was like a much improved version of her multiple special projectiles attack, in which she was still creating dense earth spears and shooting them at the opponent, but there was one part that was different: She wanted to have all the spears hit the same point.
Obviously, that took a lot of calculations based on how the enemy's shields were spinning and how much she could alter their routes, as well as her possible movements, but Rarity was capable of doing that. It just took a while.
"True Hit." She spoke quietly as she finished the complex spell formula and sent the two dozen stone spears flying.
The enemy immediately understood the danger of those spears, so she stopped attacking in favor of focusing fully on defense, but Rarity's spell had been well-made, and the spears nimbly dodged the moving shields and started to stab in a place above the mare's shoulder. One by one they started reaching the target, and the constant hits were weakening that spot on the shield enough that soon they would be able to pierce it.
But then the enemy roared and brought many of her moving shields back towards her body, interposing them between the spears and the weakened part of the shield.
Rarity sighed 'Dangerous plan it is, then. Dash would probably be happy."
And she put it into action before the enemy could regain her balance. Flash stepping close to the area of the shields, Rarity used a spell to create a cloud of dust that completely covered both fighters, blocking off all sight, and then she dived in. The dangerous plan was of course, a direct attack from close range.
Without being able to see, the opponent was forced to spin her shields randomly to try and get Rarity, but the Knight had an overwhelming advantage: She was telekinetically holding every single bit of dust in the area, effectively giving herself a perfect sense of everything around the space. The initial shields were dodged, and when she got closer, she had to parry a few of them as the close defense of the enemy was dense, but she got through.
And then she slammed her sword into the opponent with all the telekinetic strength she could muster, which was quite a lot.
Her personal shield broke under the blow, and the enemy was sent flying, obviously unconscious.
Feeling her connection with the artifacts return, Rarity caught the enemy artifact with her telekinesis and destroyed it with a powerful wind slash.
She barely had time to feel victorious over it before a spell hit her in turn.
-0-
Rainbow Dash was getting more and more annoyed. The opponent was being extremely careful to stay out of her reach, even as she refined her control of the explosions to go further and further.
And the worst part was, she wasn't even successful on trying to bring the opponent fully into the defensive, as even as he kept his distance, the stallion was still sending showers of ice spikes, lightning, and other weather magic attacks to try and harm Dash, which forced her to divide part of her efforts to counter those new attacks.
Eventually, the Knight had an idea. She created a much smaller explosion at her hooves, using the shockwave to propel herself in the direction of the enemy. She gritted her teeth as the shockwave definitely did not leave her unscathed, but she could handle it.
With repeating shockwaves, Rainbow got into range before the opponent could react, and launched a particularly powerful explosion at the pegasus.
Panicking, he activated his wheel artifact and created an immense hurricane. It only managed to block the explosion ofr an instant, but the strength of the winds launched the enemy away at high enough speed that he managed to avoid the attack.
Rainbow Dash went back to propelling herself through explosions, but at that time she had refined her technique enough to not cause much damage to herself. However, the enemy wouldn't let her repeat her plan so easily, and he began to use his artifact to create gale force winds to increase his speed enough to keep out of Rainbow's reach.
And thus, balance had been restored to their fight, as a cat and mouse game at speeds approaching the speed of sound, in which explosions and extremely powerful winds were turned from weapons into simple forms of propulsion, though the word simple was perhaps inappropriate, considering that both fighters were actually having to do very technical things to use such extreme measures to move.
However, one thing had changed. The enemy pegasus was now too swamped with having to control his own running away to be able to counter attack, which meant that Rainbow Dash was free to set the pace of the fight. And realizing that simply going after him wasn't working, the Knight changed tactics.
Creating another powerful explosion, Dash directed it at the ground and controlled it so that, when it hit, a veritable eruption of rocks exploded from it, scattering high-velocity shards across the entire sky.
The stallion stopped, and he created a powerful shield of wind in all directions to defend himself. And it worked... Until a gigantic hoof made of earth appeared at hit him with overwhelming impact.
Rainbow Dash felt her powers returning 'Earth pony magic really is useful', she thought.
The Knight had dived through the storm of shards and used the enemy's confusion to end the battle by channeling some earth magic.
Dash then flew to the opponent and destroyed the wheel artifact. She barely had time to feel proud about the fact before being hit by a spell.
-0-
Having gotten a measure of her opponent in direct combat, Trixie decided to change tactics. She teleported behind one of the buildings and immediately started casting several "trap" spells, at the same time observing the opponent to figure out her capabilities in that sort of situation.
The enemy pegasus seemed to be able to see through the building, and she simply flew over it to attack Trixie. The trap spells activated, attacking her with a variety of offensive spells, but Trixie had not had time to set up any truly powerful traps, and the pegasus managed to barrel through the attacks without much issue.
Trixie teleported again, farther away this time, and resumed creating trap spells, but the opponent also reacted faster, and flew with great speed towards Trixie's location. She crashed through the traps again, only to get surprised as Trixie had disappeared.
In the moment the opponent was distracted by the traps, Trixie had teleported precisely behind her, and drove a hoof straight to the back of her head.
But the opponent was tough, and that wasn't enough to render her unconscious. But before the pegasus could counter attack, Trixie had already teleported away. And a moment later, a trap she had deliberately not activated suddenly came to life, exploding and taking the pegasus' attention for a moment.
Then she opened her eyes and immediately moved forward, going in Trixie's direction, and instead of flying over the building in the way, she actually plowed right through it, using the magic of her artifact to enhance her movement. Accelerating to her highest speeds, she attacked Trixie before the Knight could teleport away again.
And her hoof simply passed straight through the unicorn, like she was an illusion.
It wasn't actually an illusion of course, at least not in the magical sense. Trixie had simply created a construct in her image to use as bait, and teleported in the opposite direction, since she had noticed the pegasus could not see behind herself.
It turns out that those that are certain of their immunity to illusions are actually easier to trick. Or at least, that was what Trixie was thinking as she again teleported right above the pegasus preparing a punch, but this time she had reinforced her hoof with powerful impact spells.
The blow knocked out the pegasus and drove her into the ground with enough force to leave a (small) crater.
Trixie then cast a spell to destroy the horn artifact (she had spells like it prepared ever since she knew artifacts would be involved). And then she shouted:
"Overdrive!" And exploded with power.
She had predicted the trap, and even predicted that it would come just after her victory, at her most vulnerable point, but it was still not enough to avoid the trap completely, so she had made a choice.
With dozens of possible spells running through her mind, Trixie looked at the gigantic spell light bearing down on her. At the last moment, she realized what sort of magic it was, and decided that the best option would be to ignore defense completely.
She wouldn't die anyway, so it was best to attack the enemy.
"Perfect Illusion: Restraint Effect!" She cast, and aimed the attack at the enemy who was attacking her.
Just after that, the spell hit her, and Trixie blacked out hoping this would be enough to help the others.
-0-
Sunset had a great sense for fighting, and she proved that when the opponent suddenly changed her tactics.
The white unicorn activated her artifact, creating dozens of small mirrors all around herself that absorbed all the attack spells Sunset had been shooting. Then she made the mirrors fuse together into a big mirror, which subsequently shot a powerful sphere of magic made of the combined spells.
Sunset responded by casting an attack spell that was particularly restrained by her standards. Using a thin needle of magic to attack a precise spot at that sphere.
Simply jamming a bunch of spells together wasn't really a high-level technique. That was because while powerful, the resulting energy mix was very unstable and difficult to control, and Sunset's spell targeted that precise weakness. The needle disrupted the balance of the sphere and caused it to detonate prematurely, completely negating whatever threat it could have been against her.
And she didn't stop there, sending a wave of attacks straight through the explosion to take advantage of any possible weakness the enemy might show after her attack. And it seemed like that had been a good call, because the opponent was forced to block the attacks instead of reflecting or deflecting them.
So Sunset didn't let up. She teleported close to the opponent and started a combined barrage of close range attack spells and melee combat with her enhanced strength.
The enemy was blocking or deflecting them, but she was quickly being overwhelmed by Sunset's relentless attacks, so to escape, she herself used a teleportation spell.
However, that had been a mistake. Sunset was used to dealing with opponents who could teleport.
As soon as she felt the spatial disturbance start, Sunset grinned. She quickly cast a very special spell, and managed to have it complete by the time the white unicorn vanished in the air.
It was just in time. The magic she had cast followed the enemy through the spatial zone, gaining power from it. It wasn't a complex spell, and in fact, the only thing it could do was destabilize and explode.
But that was enough, as soon as the teleport ended, the change in conditions caused the magic to do exactly what it was meant to do... Right on top of the enemy.
Sunset teleported to the sound of the explosion and wasn't surprised to see the enemy unconscious. Her powers were back, and she quickly destroyed the shield before turning around to look at the immense spell light coming in her direction.
She had been suspicious of something like that ever since the teleport to this area, but this was confirmation. That left just one thing to decide: What would she do about it?
She could tell that it wasn't an attack spell, so Sunset really had just one possible answer: She would counter-attack.
"Overdrive!" She shouted, exploding with power.
She cast the biggest spell she was able to in the time remaining.
"Triple Magic Enhance: Foe Seeking Blast!" She shouted.
Her spell was a powerful blast that would follow the spell light right to it's source and attack. Sunset was then hit by the enemy spell and fell unconscious.
-0-
Spike quickly flew forward, and perhaps inevitably, the terrain in front of him lit up as the defensive formations activated.
Since those formations were not only being powered by the magic from the environment, but also supported by two artifacts, the defensive measures they were able to use were definitely beyond normal.
Magical chains manifested themselves and tried to restrain Spike. Blasts of heat and cold magic alternated themselves, taking advantage of thermal shock. Barriers of earth erected themselves to block his path. And he was also being blasted by too many different types of spells to bother to name.
Such a powerful magical assault was definitely capable of getting through even Spike's significant defensive power, but of course, he wasn't just going to let himself be pounded into defeat.
A lot of Spike's training had been practical. That was partially because that was simply the best way to bring up his power quickly, but mostly because as a dragon, such methods were the best suited for his training.
As such, being attacked in such a manner actually brought forth feelings familiarity from within Spike, oddly enough. He knew what to do in such situations.
Casting his own protection spells, breaking enemy spells with his own attacks, feeling the flow of energy to avoid the most powerful threats and seek the weak points in the defensive formation. But most of all, he knew how to protect himself, defending his vulnerable areas and keeping himself uninjured.
He focused wholly on those tasks, and time itself seemed to lose all meaning as he simply kept up the flow of his actions at the same time as he focused completely into trying to figure out the location of the artifacts.
He had a plan to get through this fast.
Spike himself wouldn't have been able to say how long it took, but he finally managed to pinpoint the locations of both artifacts. And since they were both connected to the defense formation, why not blown all three up at the same time?
"Dragon Magic: Channel Strike!"
And that was what he did. Channel Strike was magic based on the idea of gifting power to others, except that instead of making the power more stable and harmonic to allow others to use, Spike purposely made the power as wild and destructive as he could.
The channeled power crossed through the lines of the formation, being attracted by the artifacts Spike had pinpointed, and the whole thing turned into a terrifying chain reaction as it reacted with the immense amount of power it was already channeling, causing what Sunset would euphemistically call a "complete linear energy breakdown".
Spike removed his arms from where they were protecting his eyes and looked around, seeing that the whole place had become a crater.
He spared a moment to check himself for any extra injuries or lack of strength, but even the two continuous fight hadn't taken enough out of him to worry about. So he quickly started flying towards the point where the source of magic should be. It didn't take long for him to get there.
And then he saw something horrifying.
Dozens, perhaps even hundreds of ponies, from foals to old age ones, both male and female, of every color you could imagine. They were all trapped in a gigantic cage.
And none of them had cutie marks.
-0-
Applejack's worries were soon confirmed when the opponent activated her mandala artifact again and space itself started... breaking apart.
It was even harder to follow than the previous space manipulation. Applejack felt like her mind would be hurting if she still had the Eyes of Truth working and could see exactly what was going on. Points of void started appearing everywhere in the surrounding space, and they started expanding and connecting together, separating the space into several "rooms" that were constantly shrinking.
'So it's like this, huh?' Applejack through, moving as far away from the shrinking parts as she was able to.
Despite how bad the situation seemed, she was actually relaxed. She understood very well why the enemy had not simply done something like that from the start, and how she could exploit that fact.
It would be embarrassing if she didn't, considering her fellow apprentice was Rarity, whose specialty was artifacts.
It was obvious that the mandala hadn't been made for such a thing. Looking closely, Applejack could see a few scratches appearing in the material, and feel how the magic flow was going berserk. The fact that this had been an "ordinary" artifact that had been ritually enhanced did it no favors either.
But of course, the enemy understood that, and she knew that she could deal with Applejack before the artifact broke completely.
In normal circumstances, at least.
So Applejack decided to help it along. She felt the flow of magic of the surrounding space and charged her own magic before pouring it into the void space, disturbing it even further. For a moment, it seemed like every piece of void was actually eating itself at the same time.
And the artifact could take no more, and exploded.
The space proceeded to return to normal, as Applejack's Eyes of Truth returned. She quickly Space Stepped right next to the shocked enemy mare and punched her out.
Then jumped.
Her Eyes of Truth had seen the truth of that whole place, and it was a trap about to go off.
Feeling the spell light coming, and knowing that the jump wouldn't be enough to escape, Applejack charged her magic and jumped again from the air.
And she charged worrying amounts of magic into her right forehoof and punched with it.
"Truth Seeking Blow: Boundary Break!"
Applejack smashed through the walls of the subdimension, escaping beyond the limits of the spell light.
She landed in the ground and turned around to see the true enemy.
She was a unicorn mare. Her coat was pinkish lilac and her mane was part purple and part aquamarine, and she had a cutie mark that resembled a falling star.
However, the most concerning thing was the globe that was floating beside her. It was shaped like the world, but it was translucent enough that anypony could see inside it.
It was carrying hundreds of cutie marks.
"Interesting." She said, in an even voice "You are the only one who managed to escape my trap." She narrowed her eyes "It seems I'll have to deal with you personally."
Her horn shone, and Applejack immediately space stepped away fifteen whole kilometers. Trying to fight that enemy directly would be pointless. Applejack had just needed a single look to tell that she was covered in more protection spells that Canterlot castle. She was also directly connected with the dragon lines of the land via the formation, not to mention the immense amount of power she should be able to call from all those cutie marks.
And yet, despite Applejack's prompt actions, it was not enough. Starlight Glimmer (for that was the name of the mare) managed to charge an amount of magic even Sunset would consider respectable in an instant, and she channeled the spell through the land itself, homing on Applejack with extreme speed.
The Knight was hit by the spell and she was suddenly back before the enemy.
'Conceptual magnet spell.' She thought 'No matter where Ah go, Ah'll be pulled back here. It would take too long ta break it.'
And then Applejack used a flash step to dodge the barrage of spell lights the unicorn was shooting towards her. She had to remain close to Starlight, but she could still move around a bit, and a single look was enough to tell that she didn't want to be hit by it.
'Destiny stealing magic. This isn't good.' Applejack's thoughts whirled as she sought any way she could possibly deal with the situation.
And yet, things hadn't gotten as bad as they could.
Starlight's globe shone, and it started shooting powerful spells like they were rain. Manipulating earth and wind to cripple Applejack's mobility, launching flames to block away paths of escape, and creating constructs of all sorts of forms that tried to attack the Knight. Even with her Eyes of Truth, she wouldn't be able to remain unscathed for long, and if she were hit even once, there would be no way for her to avoid having her cutie mark stolen.
Despite understanding all that perfectly, Applejack did not despair. She was the holder of the Eyes of Truth, so she would not turn away from the truth. She was a Knight of the Realm, so she would never give up. And even as she did her best to keep going for even a few seconds more, Applejack thought of something she could do.
She remembered the last time she had been in such a dangerous situation, in the battle against Flames of Annihilation. How, at that last moment, she had managed to get a glimpse of a way to win.
'Could Ah do that again?' She asked herself, and the answer was yes.
It wouldn't be easy, but her training had not been for nothing. She would turn that miracle into something she could replicate, she was going to look into the future.
Her thoughts clear, Applejack jumped into the destiny stealing magic.
At the very moment the magic was affecting her, and her fate was sealed, Applejack pushed her Eyes of Truth to the limit.
If she didn't go at least that far, there would be no way for her to see the path to victory.
Applejack fell down to the ground and had to struggle to remain conscious. She had never felt so weak in her life. She didn't feel any of her magic anymore, and that was even worse after how much stronger she had become ever since choosing the path of the Knight.
But she couldn't collapse yet, she needed to do one last thing.
She reached inside her own mouth and took out a very special scrap of paper. It was a way for the Knights to send messages to Celestia no matter the condition they were in. She focused on the paper and a word appeared on it, before the paper vanished to go towards Celestia, allowing Applejack to finally fall unconscious. That word was...
'Crusaders'.