'Things truly do change fast.' Thought Shining Armor, as he was desperately trying to hold back the shadow monsters with his shield magic. One moment, they had everything under control, with the guards being able to hold back the enemies while cycling through without suffering many losses.
But then, the shadow titans appeared.
Shining Armor would definitely have to submit a change in doctrine for dealing with shadow outbreaks. It was true that shadow titans were rare and hadn't appeared for literally thousands of years, but that was the biggest shadow outbreak in eras, so they should have had made preparations for the possibility that some would appear.
And yeah, things would have been fine if it were only one or two shadow titans, but four of them at once? That was a little too much. The Knights had been trained to deal with unexpected threats, but this was above what they could do, specially now that they were weakened from fighting so long.
Still, they gave it a valiant effort, Shining Armor making and unmaking dozens of shields in sequence to block the attacks of the amorphous titans, protecting his ponies. The magical sections joined together and showed the most powerful spells they were capable of. The flight divisions swooped down en masse, while the ground based divisions climbed atop the enemies to attack with great bravery.
And it mostly worked. Their desperate offense had managed to take down three of the titans, but it had taken pretty much all they had in order to achieve such a feat. And that truly meant everything. The magical divisions were experiencing complete exhaustion, while the flight and ground divisions had finally lost their magical weapons, thus being reduced to using their racial skills to be able to achieve anything. And since they were also exhausted, that wasn't very effective.
The menagerie of smaller shadow monsters that had scattered away while the titans came in finally came back, and now Shining Armor was using the last dregs of his strength to keep his shields up, hoping that support would come soon.
And thankfully, he managed to hold on just long enough.
"Venus Love Charge!" A beautiful voice resounded through the air.
And Cadance's pegasus avatar, the self proclaimed Warrior of Love, Venus, dove from the sky covered in a red and pink lightning. She crashed through the last remaining shadow titan, and impacted the ground creating a magical shockwave that wiped out most of the surrounding shadow monsters.
Shining Armor took the opportunity to dispel his shield and take a breath to try and recover, as Venus flew towards him.
"Looks like I got here just in time." She said.
"Thanks." Shining smiled at her, before getting serious "But things aren't under control yet. We have completely run out of magical weapons.
"Then maybe you should look back." She said with a smile.
He did so just in time to see a teleportation flash that left behind a bunch of crates containing magical weapons. He returned to look at Venus and grinned.
-0-
"Those two still have a long way to go if they want to become truly great researchers." Minuette said, looking at Coco Pommel and Suri Polomare, who were currently collapsed at the floor, unconscious.
"At least they are competent, so the rest is a matter of time." Moondancer spoke, while casting a few spells.
Minuette nodded, and that was all. But being called 'competent' by the two highest level magical researchers under the command of Princess Celestia was something that would cause envy in pretty much the entire magical community of Equestria.
They deserved it. As without their help, the magical formation that Moondancer was currently using to mass-produce magical weapons would not have been completed, or at least not as fast as it was. Minuette started teleporting the new weapon crates into a holding position, from where they would be distributed to the guard divisions that needed them.
-0-
"Chaotic Rebirth." Those were the words that Twilight's Shard of Self spoke on that critical moment.
And then, for a moment, time seemed to flow backwards, but that wasn't quite what happened. Instead, the magic forced Twilight's essence to escape from being devoured by the enemy. And it congregated onto the Shard of Self, forcefully turning it into Twilight's true body.
It was a very powerful technique, that deserved the name of "rebirth", but that didn't mean there were no demerits to it. The main one was the fact that, since the Shard of Self was the idea of Twilight's restraint, using Chaotic Rebirth meant she became unable to use any other chaos magic for a while.
But she didn't really need to. After all, Twilight had been trained by Celestia since childhood, and she always loved to learn all sorts of magic. Besides that, you didn't need chaos magic to create chaos.
"Magical Formation: Charge Explosion!" Twilight shouted, pouring all of her magical power into the spell.
The construct was only confused by Twilight's escape for a few moments, but that was already enough. Twilight finished her spell and then the very air around the enemy exploded.
The target for Twilight's spell had been the magical charge that had been imprinted on the air as a result of the leaking energy of both warriors. Chaos magic was terrible about that, and hunger magic wasn't much better, so there was a lot of energy there, and when it was all activated at once...
The result was a spectacular level of destruction.
Twilight tried to catch her breath, since the fight had been extremely tough and draining... And then the enemy construct came galloping out of the smoke of the explosion.
She had recovered her original body, but that was actually an indication of weakness, as she had become unable to sustain her devoured form. Her body was battered, and she had been reduced to only a single mouth... But she was still alive, and one mouth was enough to eat Twilight.
Her speed was quick, and she immediately got close enough. The construct extended her mouth to devour her enemy...
And the spell Twilight had cast on herself at the beginning of the fight, which had remained intact throughout all of it, finally activated. After all, Twilight couldn't afford to lose, so of course she would leave a guarantee.
The spell forced the construct into Twilight's mindscape. The enemy would usually have been able to resist it, but it was significantly weakened after the fight, so it wasn't able to.
The knight construct appeared in a confused land where all sorts of objects and places seemed to have been shattered into minuscule pieces and mixed at random. A land where there was no up and down, no idea of gravity, no points of orientation. A land where space and time didn't seem to behave rationally, with distances and periods being unable to be judged.
A being with a will of its own would be able to resist the influence of that place, but not that construct. Before it even realized it, the thing had split into pieces, and each of those pieces became Twilight.
After all, it was her mind, so it was only natural that Twilight would be there.
-0-
Radiant's curse caused Trixie's heart to explode.
Surprisingly enough, that did not kill her.
"What?" The unicorn artifact was clearly confused, but then recovered "Crystal Annihilation!" She cast.
A storm of crystals completely destroyed Trixie's body. And yet, Radiant Hope could feel that she was still alive. Thinking of a possibility, she quickly cast a specific detection spell, which confirmed her suspicions.
"A dreamsoul? You have a dreamsoul?" She was incredulous "But how is it possible for you to have hidden it from my Mirrors of Truth?!" She snarled.
Had Applejack been there, she would have gotten angry at Radiant Hope for actually believing that she could see through all illusions with just a single spell, when she didn't even understand the true meaning of Truth.
But she wasn't there, so Radiant would remain not knowing. Instead, she immediately started to cast a spell that could target the dreamsoul and finally kill Trixie.
But how would it be so easy to kill a Knight? Trixie finally finished the spell she had been preparing:
"Grand Illusion: Recovery Outline!" She shouted.
And suddenly Trixie was back, almost as if Radiant Hope had never destroyed her body. Trixie was smiling at her opponent, and the sheer strangeness of that situation actually caused Radiant Hope to pause her casting for a moment.
But she was smart, and immediately returned to it "You can't fool me with those illusions!" She snarled.
"You're right." Trixie admitted. The body she had conjured was indeed an illusion "So, I'll have to ask for your help with that."
And then, without any input from her, Radiant Hope's crystal mirrors shined with power and poured that energy into Trixie's illusion. And it was like filling in the outlines, as the illusionary turned into real.
Healing magic was very demanding, as Twilight had found. For true high-level healing, one would need at least two things: First was an amazing level of precision in your magic use, down to the smallest detail. While the other could be either enough power to make use of that precision, or a high enough level of affinity for healing magic, to make it less costly (White Marble had both things, of course).
Trixie definitely had the first pre-requisite. However, she did not have either of the possible second pre-requisites. Usually, that would mean she wouldn't have been able to make use of healing magic. But she rarely fought alone.
Recovery Outline was a spell created to make use of that fact. She had enough precision to establish where the healing should go, so she just needed someone else to provide the power. Usually that would be one of her allies, but as Trixie had just showed, an enemy worked just as well.
"What?!" Radiant Hope seemed about to lose her mind "I'm still controlling the mirrors! How did you do that?!"
Trixie smiled and looked at her, gaining time to recover her energy after such a draining spell. She talked to buy more time:
"I didn't take control of the mirrors!" Trixie said, pointing at Radiant Hope and acting in the most showy manner she could "What I'm controlling... Is you!" She finished.
At that moment, it was like an illusion had been broken, and Radiant Hope could feel Trixie magic, in the form of gliphs that had been created inside her body "How...?" She was barely able to think.
"You see... Artifacts were made to be wielded..." Trixie said "That includes you as well, isn't that right?" She smiled.
It wasn't a nice smile. In fact, it was pretty much as far from a nice smile as a smile could be without deforming the mouth somehow. Trixie's smile seemed to reflect every single nightmare that any pony had ever had. And upon seeing that smile, Radiant Hope truly lost herself to fear.
"AHHHHH!" She screamed, channeling every single bit of magic from her body and from the mirror world she controlled to try and rip Trixie's magic out of her body.
But it was a moment too late, as Trixie had bought just enough time to break the anti-overdrive restriction of the chains.
"OVERDRIVE!" Trixie shouted "Grand Illusion: Chaotic Breakdown!"
Trixie's spell forcefully changed the magical gliphs inside Radiant's body into a formation that affected all the power that she was channeling inside her body and caused it to go out of control.
Which caused Radiant Hope to blow up.
A few moments later, Trixie felt a small teleportation spell activate from the previous spot of the enemy unicorn. It was probably some sort of final countermeasure. Her body had been destroyed but her core "what would be a heart in a normal living being" had managed to survive and escape. That was truly a shame, but it really couldn't be helped.
Trixie finally collapsed, her body fine (she had even managed to avoid falling unconscious after the Overdrive, a true show of her growth) but her mind and soul tired beyond belief. She had truly walked on the edge with that battle, and it came down literally to her final plan.
The whole time, Trixie had been slowly inscribing those gliphs on Radiant Hope's body under the guise of attacks. This was all to be able to restore her body using Radiant Hope's own powers. And of course if the attacks managed to defeat her, that would be best, but if not then it was a problem.
Because Radiant Hope was truly a hardy and powerful opponent, and worst of all, she was skilled too. Under ordinary circumstances, she would have easily been able to tell that the effect of the gliphs on her body was extremely limited, and they were in fact just a big trap, designed to take advantage of the mistake the enemy did end up making, which was trying to rip them out by force.
But those weren't ordinary circumstances, because Trixie manipulated her opponent into committing that mistake in a truly masterful way.
First, she lulled Radiant Hope into a false sense of security, into believing that she was about to win, and Trixie was all out of moves. She intended to use an Overdrive to sell the impression, using half the energy for a spell and holding the other half for her final trick. That would mean damaging her body slightly more than an ordinary Overdrive, but it ended up not being necessary when her Overdrives were sealed.
That was good news and bad news. The good news was that she wouldn't have to do that very complicated Overdrive trick. The bad news was that she needed to split her attention into trying to remove the overdrive seal while she was executing the last part of her plan, which was one of the most harrying experiences she ever had.
Because the last part of her plan wasn't something simple either. She needed to truly sell her deception while also doing all the other ridiculous demands of her plan. The first point was breaking Radiant Hope's expectations by not dying, thanks to her dreamsoul. But that also meant enduring the pain of her heart and body being destroyed and focusing enough to do her grand illusion and subsequent manipulation of Radiant Hope, in a way that she would not notice, causing her to be knocked out of mental balance.
Trying to deal with the overdrive seal while doing all of that was simply putting salt on the wound.
But she did it, which meant that Trixie could continue her performance. The next step of which was to sell the image that she was in control now, acting casually and revealing the gliphs at an appropriately dramatic moment. This was made more difficult by the fact that Trixie was still working on removing the seal so she could use her Overdrive to finish things up.
It was difficult, and she could not delay her actions too much, or Radiant Hope would be able to regain her cool and everything would be ruined.
Finally, she hit Radiant Hope, who was already on an unstable state of mind, with Nightmare Smile, a dream based fear illusion that took essentially no power at all to cast (which was good, since magical power was at a premium after she restored herself). That caused the enemy to panic and fall into the trap, and Trixie managed to finally remove the seal in time to take advantage of it with her Overdrive.
It was hard. It was truly making a performance on the edge of death. But she had succeeded.
Fighting on the edge like that was Trixie's path as a Knight. And with that successful performance, she felt like she was one step closer to finally achieving her goal of so long.
"I hope the others are alright..." She said.
-0-
Sunset was hit by the backlash of her broken spell, and the chaotic monster took the chance to attack her with all it had. It was only at the last moment that she managed to recover enough to both use her extreme movement to evade and use a lot of quick spells to block. The following few seconds of the battle were fierce and frantic, with Sunset barely managing to keep herself from being defeated.
But then she spoke two words, casting a spell that would be the beginning of her counter attack, the words were:
"Battlefield Oath!"
For a second, it felt like a whole new world was being defined, a world that existed entirely in the form of the battle between Sunset and the monster.
And then it vanished, but Sunset drew support from that, from the very idea of that battle, and her power rose to levels that even her Trance Mode could not get even close to matching.
"Essence Magic: Space Upheaval!" And she proved it by releasing an astoundingly powerful spell.
Her magic shattered and then fixed space itself. It was easier than merely destroying it for complicated reasons (essentially, space liked being whole, and would go against you), and it was enough to be an extremely powerful attack, as the side-effects of such a thing were capable of utterly wiping out the powerful offense of the chaotic monster, as well as giving it a wound across its entire body, which was almost deep enough to reach the core.
That was followed by the monster fixing itself in a single instant, before shifting to the form of a hurricane of lightning to attack Sunset.
Because that was the cost of the Battlefield Oath. While Sunset could be enpowered by the battle, her opponent was also capable of the same thing, since he had been a participant of the battle just the same. And that was a lot of power.
The battle reached an entire new level. Both of the combatants tried to overwhelm each other with some of the most violent and terrifying spells they were capable of. Sunset's Essence Magic was her newest developed technique, which she was usually only capable of using in a very limited capacity, and was just as powerful as that implied, with Sunset showing off her mastery of all sorts of dangerous destructive magic, while the chaotic monster was doing such ridiculous manipulations of reality that even Sunset was surprised, despite having known Twilight since they were children.
Through it all, the battle had turned into a standstill, and if it continued for long enough, Sunset would definitely be overwhelmed again.
But that was okay with her, because she wasn't intending in letting things drag out for long. And she wasn't counting in being able to overwhelm her opponent quickly either. She just needed to wait a little bit.
She needed her opponent to draw more and more upon the power of the battlefield, she needed it to rely upon that power, she needed that connection to be made between both combatants and the battle, because only then would it be strong enough for what she had planned.
And when she judged it to be enough, Sunset's actions were swift. She teleported far away from the enemy while leaving a decoy, retracted her magical aura completely and then she executed the most crucial part of her plan, by casting a spell with five simple words:
"Domain Magic: Curse of Absolute!"
Magic based on creating Domains was one of the highest and most difficult types of magic to cast. That was proven by the fact that, despite how powerful Sunset currently was, the only reason she managed to use that successfully was because she had tricked the chaotic monster into connecting itself with the spell, thus being able to use its power as well.
And that wasn't the only reason why she had done that, either. Curse magic was a subset of bond magic, since it was based upon creating a bond of mutual harm between the caster and the target, so having the chaotic monster connect to the Battlefield Oath made it a target as well, when the Curse of Absolute manifested.
But what was the Curse of Absolute? It was a magic based on one of the concepts Sunset understood very early: Enhancement. As in, it was magic that forcefully enhanced whatever magic was used inside the Domain until the limits.
That might have seemed a good thing for most people, but it wasn't, and Sunset understood that very deeply. Enhancement never worked without control, a lesson she had learned very painfully indeed. And the enhancement of the curse were truly all around, forcing everything into a higher state without regards to how it would fit with everything else or if the user would be able to actually control the result.
Sunset knew what would happen, which was why she retracted her aura and stopped casting any other spells, the chaotic monster on the other hand...
Its body warped and broke as multiple spells backfired in a variety of ways inside it. There were explosions, fire, objects materializing into the flesh and even more of those effects. The monster was once again ravaged by a great power. But this time, when it tried to recover, it only caused more and more harm to its body.
Sunset watched all this with a focused expression, before speaking:
"Looks like it's not gonna be so easy."
Because the formation spirit had realized what was happening, and managed to stop the use of magic before the monster died. And in the end its body was harmed but not destroyed, meaning that Sunset still had something to do.
She galloped straight at the monster, using only her physical power, without any magic at all. After that, she jumped up into the "chest" of the creature to avoid its swipe (the thing had also worked out how to attack without magic), and then charged power into one of her legs and hit the monster with all she had.
She only channeled magic at the last moment, and only the most basic possible power enhancement, but she still felt as if an explosion had gone off inside her leg, and blood started seeping out. Yet, the result was worth it, as her physical hit managed to get the monster to try crazily to throw her off (she held on with her other legs) and also pierced through its flesh, allowing Sunset to get closer to the core.
And so she kept at it, pounding on the monster and digging herself deeper until she reached the core and started attacking that next. Upon which the monster struggled even more crazily, to the point of raising a gigantic tentacle and slamming it into its own chest. The impact managed to break several of Sunset's bones and cause internal injuries, because she couldn't protect her body with magic for obvious reasons.
But she didn't care about such things. Sunset could heal herself after the opponent was dead, which would deactivate the Curse of Absolute. She simply kept attacking to the point where she could barely feel her legs anymore, much less raising them, but with a final effort, she forced one last kick out of her abused body, and managed to shatter the enemy core.
With a last roar, the chaotic monster broke off into pieces, allowing Sunset to land on the ground. She immediately set upon using healing magic to restore her abused body back into a stable condition. While she did that, she thought about the fight, and about the Essence Magic.
"Just a little more..." She spoke to herself "I'm almost there..."
-0-
As soon as the spell was completed, Sombra was attacked from all sides. Pinkie punched him with her aura construct, Rarity unleashed all four Ruler Swords at once in a devastating elemental barrage, Applejack Stepped over to his side and punched straight at his heart and Rainbow Dash bathed him in powerful lightning.
Clearly, the four Knights had been incensed by his actions. Sombra had expected them to counter attack, but he did not expect that it would be this vicious and overwhelming, like they had been holding back during the entire fight.
That was, in fact, the case. But Sombra still wasn't willing to even consider such a notion, as he tried his best to defend himself against those attacks, using every possible advantage the shadow world could grant him. He didn't even consider that as he readied his own counter-attack, another exceedingly powerful spell aimed at the Knights who were attacking him.
However, he was forced to consider that, when his powerful spell was completely blocked by Fluttershy and her World's Harmony.
The pegasus looked at her, and her eyes was something he could only describe as "disappointment". It was like she was saying "did you really think you could get me to back off just with that?". It was like she didn't even care about the loss of her leg (she could restore it later, but still), and she knew that Sombra couldn't repeat his previous spell so easily, due to the rules of the material world.
As he was struggling with that concept, the other four Knights attacked him again. All in all, Sombra was completely on the backhoof.
There was a reason why the Knights were holding back: This battle simply wasn't tough enough to force them to go all out. Sombra might be a great mage, with an astounding number of tricks and preparations, but he simply was not that good at fighting. The five had previously fought against Chrysalis, and even weakened like she was, the changeling queen had been a much more dangerous opponent.
She fought as if she was saying "one of us will die here, and it won't be me". In comparison, Sombra was simply far too worried with trying to keep himself alive, and far too used to overwhelming the enemy to death instead of fighting properly. And now that they had already exposed their power (they had been holding back just in case of any other surprises), they went on to take full advantage of it.
"Ruler Magic: Triaune of Wings!" Rarity cast.
For a moment, Rarity looked like she had three pairs of wings: One made of fire, one made of wind, and one made of water. Then the moment passed, and the true form of her triaune was revealed: Elemental wings that constantly changed between different properties, wind for speed, fire for acceleration and water for maneuverability. All together, it gave her flying skills that even Rainbow Dash had to respect.
It was a complex spell, only possible due to another of Rarity's new Artifacts: The Horseshoe of Sight. Based upon Applejack, it gave her a heightened level of perception, and awareness of her spells. It seemed like a smal thing, but it certainly worked as a veritable multiplier for her abilities.
And Rainbow Dash obviously wouldn't simply remain quiet in face of such a thing. She started attacking faster and faster, and her lightning body kept getting brighter, because she was actually charging up for a big spell. And then she suddenly stopped right in front of Sombra and attacked.
"Weather Charge: Lightning Spark!" She shouted.
Her wings of lightning grew to a gigantic size, and Rainbow Dash flapped them once, releasing a huge wave of lightning at Sombra. He was battered to the point where even with the support of the shadow world, he was barely able to prevent a truly critical injury.
However, he still had one last trick up his sleeve. Sombra used not one, but two very powerful spells at once. One of them was a dimensional spell, which he used to isolate Fluttershy away from the others, while the other one...
"Shadow Empire!"
Was a very powerful killing spell, which released a rain of shadow crystals from all over the shadow world, leaving absolutely no safe spot.
Faced with that, Pinkie used her hope construct to protect the other three, receiving the entire attack herself, and the construct she was using as armor proved to be exceedingly resilient... but not quite to the levels of Fluttershy. The attack lasted for fifteen excruciating seconds, and when it was over, Pinkie's body had received countless injuries, to the point where it seemed like she was struggling just to stay on her hooves.
However, contrary to the situation, Pinkie just grinned and cast another spell:
"Emotion Charge: Pure Anger!"
And very quickly, the blue construct disappeared, letting the other Knights leave, and Pinkie's body was dominated by a red aura, just like during the fight against Flames of Annihilation. And in a matter of seconds, her body regenerated back into peak condition.
As might be expected, this was definitely bad news for Warlock Sombra. But his situation became even worse when Fluttershy reappeared and immediately cast another spell:
"Empathy Drive: Soul Emulate!"
And with that, Sombra received a taste of his own medicine, as Fluttershy began using powerful shadow magic spells against him.
The reason why Fluttershy had been so passive during the fight, only defending, was because she was preparing that. A normal Soul Emulate would not work, since she would be able to copy Sombra's own powers, but not his connections to the shadow world, that were the part that truly made it effective.
But over the course of the battle, her empathy had slowly managed to sense every single bit of connection between Sombra and his created world, and so, she was able to copy it, and turn the Shadow World against Sombra.
Upon seeing the situation deteriorate more and more, Sombra did exactly what would be expected of him in such a situation:
"Shadow End!" He shouted.
That was a very special spell, designed specifically to make the shadow world self-destruct. The result was astonishing, the isolated world turned into a maelstrom of chaotic destruction, forcing Fluttershy to focus on defending the other Knights, leaving Sombra free to make his escape.
Or at least that was his plan. However, he had committed a big mistake: He overlooked the presence of Knight Applejack.
As soon as he started his escape spell, Applejack appeared right in front of him with her Space Step. He had lost the support of the shadow world, and his own power was occupied with casting a spell, so that was the single moment in which he was most vulnerable, and it didn't escape the eyes of the Knight.
"Eyes of Truth: Perfect Death!" Applejack called, and punched.
Her hoof was both material and immaterial. It passed through Sombra's flesh and final defenses as if they weren't there, and finally hit its target: The ethereal connection between Sombra's body and his soul. And with a single hit, that had an impact without impact, the target was destroyed.
Applejack stayed there for one second, Looking at Sombra's lifeless body, before Stepping back into the protection of Fluttershy. Rarity asked her a question:
"Did you See it?"
Applejack nodded "Yup. Ah know what Sombra's been using to cheat death."