Knights of the Realm

by Kinni


Wedding Inconveniences

If someone were to ask how Applebloom was feeling while she managed the double bond, she would probably downplay it by saying that it was a lot like trying to concentrate with two ponies screaming in her years about completely different subjects. In truth, the feeling was more like her body had been split into thousands of pieces, half of which were screaming about something while trying to pull away from the other half, which were also doing the same thing, and the pieces were all mixed together.

However, it was difficult to argue with the result. The disk they had been standing on since the beginning grew into a dome-like winged construct made of half weather magic and half magical strings, all supported by bond magic to keep it from collapsing due to the extreme opposing forces. That construct was doing a reasonable impression of an alicorn, as it flew around at high speeds, shrugged off dangerous attacks and shot off powerful spells.

They had taken the leading position in the fight, seamlessly cooperating with Spike by taking the brunt of the enemy's counterattacks and putting on pressure from the front, allowing him to exert his destructive power to the maximum efficacy. Usually their roles were the opposite, as Spike's resilience was one of his better qualities, but his current state of no defense meant that such an approach wouldn't be possible.

Still, even as the four young knights worked together in an amazing display of skill and power, it soon became clear that it still wasn't enough. The Crusaders were exerting maximum effort to just barely deal with the constantly changing, powerful attacks that the scorpion conjured from each of its legs. None of them were straightforward, some coming from an entirely different position than the focusing power, some having attacks hidden within other attacks, some being traps that sprung up when least expected, and all sorts of other tricks.

The Crusaders used everything they had learned and then some, managing to keep ahead by a thread, but they were slowly losing ground. Meanwhile, Spike was free to focus fully on attacking, dashing in and out whenever there was a chance and causing major damage to the body of the scorpion. However, he still couldn't deal enough damage to outpace the monster's unreal levels of regeneration, which was even enough to rebuild torn legs in a second.

Worst of all, their opponent was actually evolving during the fight. They had actually almost managed to take it down soon after Spike went into Shed Scale mode, only for it to escape by a thread via judicious use of both teleportation and barrier spells, but since then Spike's attacks were being mitigated more and more by the Scorpion's own defenses, while the Crusader's interference was proving less effective, giving less chances for Spike to strike those blows.

The situation was rapidly becoming untenable, so the Crusaders decided to change things up.

"Dual Bond!" Was declared again, only this time it Applebloom had taken Sweetie Belle's place in saying it. It wasn't truly necessary to match the species, but it helped a bit.

The symbols over them changed again. This time they were the cutie marks of Fluttershy and Applejack, and together with the change in the marks, the power around the Crusaders also shifted. From a construct of wind and spell aura, it shifted into a more subtle form that brought a mountain to mind. It was a dense and solid mist that enveloped the Crusaders like a suit of armor.

They had been flying when that happened, and they fell with such speed that was as if gravity had a grudge against them. The trio crashed on top of the enemy like a falling house.

The crash stunned the scorpion for a moment, and they used that moment wisely, all three of them reaching out with their aura to restrain the beast's jaws, legs and tail. Those tried to trash around and escape, but the grip of the crusaders, forged out of will and power, could not be broken so easily.

An opening made, Spike attacked without hesitation, dashing to the monster's side and letting it rip with an almost berserk ferocity, gouging into the pseudo-flesh of the beast with claw attacks that could tear apart diamonds. And the monster, who could not defend itself, was being opened up little by little.

The next thirty seconds were extraordinarily intense. Spike was literally digging his way inside the body of the enemy, and each time he got close to where the core of that existence had to be, the Crusaders found it more and more difficult to keep the enemy restrained. Soon enough the monster stopped even pretending to care about its own body, and used powerful destructive spells at point blank range.

It could not 'aim" at the crusaders, so instead it attacked the ground, his spells affecting mostly his own body, but by simple proximity the crusaders started to receive some damage, and the monster healed itself rapidly enough to offset the damage it was doing to itself, while the crusaders were using each and every scrap of power they possessed just to keep it restrained.

Still, even as their injuries piled up, the trio declined to give the enemy even an inch of space to work with. Their concentration did not waver in the slightest, and Sweetie Belle, who was keeping the 'balance' at the time, worked with all her strength to compensate from any deviations caused by the enemy's efforts.

Ultimately though, when Spike was about to deliver a fatal blow, the last desperate effort of the enemy proved to be beyond their ability to handle. The monster compressed itself to the point where cracks could be seen even in its blood, and chaotic energy leaked through the cracks, shining ominously.

At the last moment, Spike realized what was happening, and quickly dashed out of the blast zone, but the crusaders, even if they noticed the danger, simply had no energy left to move away. The monster imploded in an eruption of powerful chaotic energy, such being mostly directed upwards, exactly at the trio.

Despite the sturdiness of their current form, that 'attack' was more than enough to drive them over the edge. Their aura was broken through, their magic was shattered like ceramic, and even the final defenses of their bodies suffered under the onslaught of power. The crusaders lost consciousness all at the same time.

-0-

After an indeterminate amount of time, Applebloom opened her eyes. She looked around groggily and quickly ascertained two things: One was that both Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo were nearby, and already stirring. And the second was that Spike was still fighting.

The enemy had changed, and instead of a scorpion form, Spike was facing off against a dozen flying serpentine forms. And from what she could see, he was doing fairly well. In fact, he seemed to be moving even faster and hitting even harder than before.

The other two woke up and also saw that, leading to a shared sense of awe to pass through them. They hadn't realized that Spike was that strong.

But instants later, they realized that their assumptions were mistaken. Upon looking closer at the dragon, they realized that despite avoiding all the attacks of the serpents, more and more injuries were opening up on his body. The conclusion was clear, Spike was simply ignoring the limits of his weakened body and moving at full strength despite the wounds.

At that moment, something shifted inside the mind of the three, they completely forgot about Sunset watching the fight and their world was reduced to a single realization: Their companion needed help, so they had to move.

The three fillies struggled and stumbled as they got up, their bodies screaming that they were past their limits, and yet the crusaders stood. They did not speak, and neither did they look at each other, but a feeling of shared understanding passed through them.

What they had been doing before was not enough. They needed to go further. They might have never managed that during their training sessions, but they just had to do it. Their will simply refused to consider any other option.

"Triple Bond." The three spoke in unison.

Their magic, previously reduced to a trickle by the injuries, sparked back into a torrent of power, a hurricane created by three energies clashing, mixing and twisting around each other. Three cutie marks appeared above them: Twilight's, Pinkie's and Rarity's.

Sweetie Belle was the one to channel Rarity's bond, while Applebloom focused on Twilight and Scootaloo on Pinkie. Now there was no one left to ground them, so each of the fillies had to rely on themselves to maintain their sense of self, as well as trusting that the others would do the same. Even the slightest sense of doubt would destroy the fragile yet powerful bond that allowed them to mix those disparate powers.

The hurricane of power started wild and uncontrolled, but the trio's will slowly brought it under control, and the three separate powers started feeling like one. The aura of the three condensed into the shape of a sphere, and the power was far more dense than whatever they had been capable of before.

The serpents noticed that sudden change, and the brief distraction allowed Spike to destroy two of them with attacks consisting of all the power he could muster. Then, the Crusaders opened their eyes and took a step forward.

That step stemmed from the chaotic powers they were harnessing, and it took only that one step to appear in the middle of the battlefield of dragon and serpents. And immediately after appearing, they attacked.

The attack was like a fist of pure telekinetic power, slamming into the battlefield and sparing only the Knights from its wrath. The serpents were all driven into the ground with minor damage. But damaging them hadn't been the point, the Crusaders knew that despite the monster having split into multiple bodies, it should still only have a single core, and with the chaotic expertise borrowed from Twilight and Pinkie, the trio could detect it.

Stepping once more, they appeared beside one of the serpents, which didn't look any different from the others, and before said monster could rise from the ground, it was once again forced back down, this time by a focused blast of magical energy. And though said attack was powerful, its true purpose was simply to delay the enemy for them to prepare their real strike.

The air above the sphere cracked with sparks both electric and fiery, simply a side effect of the tremendous level of chaotic power congregating at that point, and yet such chaotic effects did not spread even an inch further, held in check by a powerful sheath of telekinesis.

That word, sheath, was entirely appropriate, because what was being created was a blade, one made of matter and space twisted up by chaos, and forged through pure power and Rarity's borrowed skill. It only took a few moments for it to form, a pillar of energy shining like a supernova. Then the Crusaders spoke in perfect unison:

"Bond Magic: Severing Chaos."

And the blade struck. But it wasn't as simple as merely a chop, instead the blade briefly seemed to exist on every point of its trajectory simultaneously, leaving no room for even such a powerful chaotic entity to avoid it.

When the attack ended, there remained not a trace of their target. And soon the other serpents twitched and dissolved away like mere illusions.

The three fillies cancelled their magic then, knowing that it was over. It was just in time, as they couldn't have endured that state any longer. They saw Spike looking at them and collapsed into unconsciouness, their job done.

+0+

Due to its simple mind, the artefact being that was facing Trixie was literally incapable of feeling an emotion as complex as frustration. And yet, the current situation of the battle left it dangerously close to learning such.

The reason for that was Trixie's current battle strategy. She simply appeared suddenly and hit the enemy once before disappearing again. The construct tried every strategy it could, from trying to guess when and where Trixie would appear to simply hitting the entire arena at once, to give her no place to hide. None of them worked, it was far from smart enough to outpredict Trixie, and when she disappeared, it didn't seem like she was anywhere within the arena.

The reason for that, of course, is that she really wasn't, or rather, her physical body wasn't. The Realms of the Unreal was a powerful technique that turned its area of effect into a state that was halfway between reality and illusion, including the caster herself. As such, Trixie could make herself appear and disappear as easily as she could conjure illusions. And when she disappeared, it wasn't like she was hiding, but instead her physical form had ceased to exist.

Despite being powerful, however, it wasn't an unbeatable technique, specially considering it was the first time Trixie used, thus she hadn't had time to work on its flaws. The cornestone of the magic was the creation of a subspace overlayed onto reality, and Trixie used that space as an anchor for her soul, like a more advanced version of the dreamsoul. Otherwise, making her physical body disappear would be nothing more than a needlessly elaborate way to commit suicide.

It was better than simply using a dreamsoul for two reasons: One was the fact that it was far more difficult to destroy a subspace than a dreamsoul, while the second was the fact that, combined with some dream magic to support the space, it allowed her to create anything she wanted within, just as easily as she conjured illusions.

In theory, anyway. Currently, it was taking all that Trixie had just to make and unmake herself fast enough to be useful in combat. And obviously, there were also many ways to disturb Trixie's control of the subspace or hinder her magic in other manners. However, the opponent could not do any of those, because it was far too specialized. Since it had been created to counter the abilities Trixie had shown Radiant Light, it simply wasn't prepared for her new skills.

Trixie attacked in a very calculated way, hitting the opponent in places she had pinpointed as possible weaknesses and taking note of the results. She had to do things as such because the physical form she was conjuring was in the same state of between reality and illusion as everything else in the subspace (with the exception of the enemy), which meant her attacks only had half of their normal effect (another flaw of her technique).

The unicorn illusionist methodically hit several spots on the body of the construct, slowly getting a sense of its structure. It would be much harder if the enemy had been built properly, but as Trixie had realized before, its production had been rushed with an emphasis on short term combat, so there were quite a few weaknesses to be found, both big and small.

She didn't rush to attack them, however. Trixie had a few hunches about traps Radiant Hope could have put inside a weapon designed to kill her, so she had to make sure to know enough to avoid them. And soon enough Trixie figured out the perfect place to start attacking.

It was under the enemy's body, right next to the right foreleg. From what she could see, it was very close to the core of the artefact. It would usually be a very awkward place to hit in other circumstances, but not when Trixie could appear wherever she wanted. She kept her hit and vanish tactics, but this time focusing only on that single spot, where she slowly began to break through.

It was very slow, though, so Trixie started to replace one of her hooves with a drill every time and using it to attack. Eventually she would need to learn to conjure things without replacing parts of herself, but for the moment it was enough.

The enemy realized that it was nearing death, thus its attacks became wilder and more reckless, but it wasn't enough. Trixie had total control of the fight, and it wasn't long before she pierced through the enemy's core. And then disappeared again.

It was just in time, as the construct self-destructed in a massive explosion, clearly intended to take out whoever managed to kill it. But Trixie had foreseen that possibility, and prepared for it.

She reappeared soon after, and realized that the subspace was slowly starting to vanish, only supported by her own magic. Trixie then closed her eyes and computed another set of calculations before doing the ritual to reverse her technique and make everything real again.

The subspace collapsed and she found herself back on her previous position. Trixie took a step and fell to the ground.

'Looks like that drained me more than expected. Guess I'll leave the rest to the others.'

Was her last thought before slipping into unconsciousness.

+0+

Applejack was thinking fast. That was something she had become accostumed to doing ever since her Eyes of Truth had gained the ability to see into the future, as being able to take decisions quickly in response to what she saw was preeminent.

However, that was far from the only use of fast thinking, and in fact wasn't even the most important. In reality, the ability of the Eyes of Truth to understand what they saw on a deep level would always be the most powerful one. That had always been the case for every wielder of the Eyes of Truth in the past. And such an ability would be useless if Applejack was incapable of acting on that information in a timely manner.

Making things harder was the fact that the Truth Applejack saw wasn't something that could be easily explained. In fact, the Knights had made some experiments, and even with Fluttershy applying her empathy solely towards Applejack, with an entire ritual to help pass the information along, there was simply far too much that she wasn't able to understand.

As such, Applejack was the only one who could make effective use of the deeper information her Eyes uncovered, which went back to the necessity of thinking fast, drawing conclusions fast and acting fast. It was a very important role on the team, and one which said pony took extremely seriously.

Upon seeing Chrysalis' impossible attack, Applejack had already focused on trying to understand it, which only became more pressing when she found herself the next target. Being able to accurately determine the relation between Fluttershy's World's Harmony and real space, as well as hitting it in such a way to target a precise location with enough power was something that she quickly deemed to be impossible, so the question remained as to what she was doing instead.

Applejack had observed Chrysalis enough during the battle to see through her magical specialty. It was life magic, using her own life, her own essence and her own existence as both fuel and object for her powers. She had also seen the attack that had hit Rarity through Fluttershy's defenses. Using knowledge of the former, she needed to decypher the latter.

In the first moments, she realized that Chrysalis' attack had contained not a hint of space magic, in the following moments, she was surprised to find bond magic as the answer. It was difficult to accept, as Chrysalis didn't have enough of a bond with Rarity to overcome the metaphorical distance created by Fluttershy's defenses, and even if she had, Rarity would have noticed the forming bond and been able to stop it.

What was she truly bonding to, then? Applejack pondered that question through a few instants that seemed to last an eternity, and suddenly an answer leapt out of the void of truth: Herself. Believing that, despite how strange it seemed, Applejack looked towards Rarity once more, and forced her eyes to see much deeper than usual, until she found what she was looking for.

It was scales. Chrysalis' powerful attack hadn't only been an attack, but the exploding scales had split into innumerable shards, so small that even Applejack's eyes hadn't noticed until she looked closer, and they had spread around everywhere, but mostly on the Knights, marking them in her senses. It was probably a counter-measure designed for Trixie's illusions, but it had an unexpected effect.

Chrysalis could target her own self, that connection overpowering Fluttershy's defensive space, and turning her spell into a channel to hit beyond harmony. It was truly an unfortunate occurrence, and Applejack's first thought was to tell Fluttershy to drop her spell, but then she realized something: If Chrysalis was connecting to herself in order to attack them, that also meant she was connecting them to her. And Applejack was uniquely suited to take advantage of that.

There was only a few moments remaining before Chrysalis' attack, and Applejack Looked at her foe, preparing her best attack and adapting it to the current target. All the magic she could spare went to her right forehoof, while the rest was dedicated to bracing herself against the coming attack.

As if they had planned, both the changeling and the knight attacked at the exact same moment.

"Eyes of Truth: Heart Destroyer Blow!" Applejack called, just before receiving a hit that she was certain had cracked her skull.

But she hit, and her powerful strike went through Chrysalis' defenses thanks to her own power, and struck at her heart directly.

"Gragh..." Applejack moaned in agony, before looking up to see the damage her attack had caused.

Chrysalis seemed to have shrunk in on herself, her whole body was trembling and her eyes were unfocused. And yet, Applejack's heart fell. Despite putting everything she had in an attack on the enemy's weakest point, it still hadn't been enough. It was certainly effective, but far from a critical injury for someone like Chrysalis.

Applejack sent two messages through the network, one was for Fluttershy: 'Drop the spell'. The other was for everypony: 'Go all out'. They wouldn't get a better opportunity than that.

The time she took on that was too long, however, as Chrysalis wouldn't allow an attack against her heart to go unanswered. Applejack felt like her hoof was being held by something, preventing her from retracting it, and she Looked to see what was going on.

It was just in time to see Chrysalis' heart forming a fanged mouth and biting down on her hoof.

"AAAAAAHHHHH!" Applejack screamed in pain. She looked down to see a bloody stump in the place her hoof had been.

"Restoration!" Came Rarity's spell, and Applejack's hoof was reconstructed.

It wasn't like everything was alright, however. The amount of magic needed to do such was enough to make it almost impossible to channel magic through that hoof, essentially crippling several of Applejack's techniques.

Still, Applejack's message had been passed, and the first one to respond to it was, of course, Rainbow Dash.

"True Body: Primordial Storm!" She called.

The space around her turned into a chaotic maelstrom of conflicting weather patterns. The air continually crashed into itself, heating up due to the pure pressure, but the warm air couldn't escape upwards, instead being forced back down in a manner like a horizontal hurricane, building up ever more energy. At the same time, the many foreign elements condensed together into crystaline drops of water.

And the water wasn't really water, but a different substance forced into the general properties of water by the system itself. That pseudo water reacted with the energy of the hurricane, creating an increasing electrical charge, which itself reacted with everything else in the space, mixing the "water" and air into an extremely reactive matter that caused all of it to light up like an explosion.

But that explosion wasn't allowed to expand beyong that space, instead reflecting itself over and over again, tearing down the mix of substances and creating strange molecules of matter that would not be able to exist in any other conditions. To make things simple, it could be said that Rainbow Dash had become like a young planet, a state far from stability, in which the weather could be generously described as "impossible".

Not that she completely understood all the details. The only thing she knew was that this was such powerful weather that she would die just by being in the middle of it, were she a normal pony. But she was a Knight, and her will was breaking limits, so she finished things up by fusing with her created weather.

What she experiences at that point wasn't pain, not really, but simply the feeling of being aware of each and every point of that weather, just like it was her own body. An instant later the magic was done, and Rainbow Dash's appearance had changed to become at once vague and distinct, as her silhouette remained the same, even as her body changed into a constantly shifting maelstrom of colors and shapes that gave the impression of a storm in a bottle.

And Rainbow Dash moved towards Chrysalis. But instead of working with or around the air in the path, she simply seemed to ignore it, as if her personal being had precedence over the natural world. She punched her enemy, and her punch was fire, and it was lightning, and it was ice, all at the same time, paradoxically fusing together disparate elements, and her punch was without sound or shockwave, as every drop of energy was completely focused on defeating Chrysalis.

That one hit affected the changeling queen more than what any of the others (save Applejack) had managed to. Cracks spread in her shell from the point of contact, and Chrysalis recoiled a few feet away in surprise and pain.

Just behind Rainbow Dash was Pinkie Pie. She did things different from the pegasus, starting by congregating her power before calling out a spell. Her magic was much more low-key, showing that it was a particularly special technique, as chaos magic generally couldn't be described as low-key. Only if someone were to look closely would they be able to tell she was even using magic, and just by noticing that the area around her seemed unnaturally still, as though frozen in time.

And if that hypothetical observer were to keep watching, they would notice a very subtle change, looking like their eyes were unfocusing, but instead of Pinkie splitting in two, it was more like a thin mist had split off from her head. Of course, that wasn't quite what was going on, but it was close enough to understand. Pinkie was essentially splitting part of herself in half. Specifically, her mind.

Duplication was a common spell in the arsenal of chaotic mages. However, that usually only meant creating multiple bodies which either had some sort of slight artificial intelligence, or were controlled via multitasking. What Pinkie was doing was something much more complicated: She was splitting her "ego", her "consciousness" into two. And it wasn't even a true split, as only part of her ego had been copied, instead of her entire mind.

But copying just that much was already enough for her current purposes, because it allowed her to do something that had been impossible before.

"Split Technique: Dual Charge!" She finally cast her spell.

Two strands of pure emotion awakened within her, one was hope, which spread through her body, while the other was joy, which fused with her split off ego. This was an evolution of the Emotion Charge, achieving two pure states of emotion at the same time, thus obtaining both of their powers at once.

The result of that was Pinkie multiplying herself dozens of times (normal clones, not ego divisions) and each one of her copies was enveloped by the aura of hope. Each aura was significantly smaller than the usual for that power, but they were still a lot bigger than the earth pony herself.

And by the time Chrysalis had recoiled from Rainbow Dash's attack, all the Pinkie Pies were already poised to attack. What followed was a veritable barrage of punches, as each and every one of the hope-enhanced Pinkie clones attacked continuously, hitting every inch of Chrysalis' body. It didn't take long for the cracks Rainbow Dash had left on her body to begin widening.

But while the Knights could go all out, there was no reason for Chrysalis not to do the same thing. While the other four Knights were still preparing their own attacks, the changeling queen unleashed her full power.

Just like when she had created copies of herself, the focus was on the sides of her body, but instead of bulging out, they outright exploded, forcing both Rainbow Dash and all the Pinkie Pies away. The holes left behind showed that the interior of Chrysalis' body had turned into a physical darkness that wavered and contorted in and of itself. Applejack was specially surprised because the change was even greater to her Eyes of Truth, including the very worrisome observation that the location of her heart had become vague and hazy.

And yet she wasn't done. The darkness inside Chrysalis poured out through the holes in the form of a liquid black mist, and Applejack realized that the mist was made of uncountable grains of basic matter which had been compressed way beyond reasonable limits, to the point that a tenth of an inch sized grain weighted as much as a boulder. The earth pony wanted to warn the two about that, but before she had the chance, Chrysalis attacked.

The mist struck down like the very sky was falling, in an attack that left almost no room for evasion. Rainbow Dash reacted with extreme speed and only barely managed to dash out of the way. But Pinkie Pie did not manage it.

The sound of the hit was like a hundred bolts of lightning striking at the same moment, and then there was only one Pinkie Pie remaining, unconscious inside a crater just below Chrysalis. Even the extra resilience of the hope aura wasn't enough for her to endure a single hit.

And things got worse. Almost before anyone could register what had happened, Chrysalis was already on the move, as if that hit had not been anything special for her. And she moved right towards Rainbow Dash. The pegasus increased her speed to the maximum and used every single trick she had in order to try and lose the changeling queen, but none of that seemed to have even the slightest effect, as Chrysalis reached her in instants.

In truth, Chrysalis was using her mist. The sheer weight of it was enough to bend and compress space, leading to a velocity that not even Dash could match. At the last moment, the Knight abandoned her attempt to flee, and instead turned around and attacked Chrysalis with everything she could muster, at the same time as the changeling attacked her.

Their two blows clashed for a few instants before Rainbow Dash was launched away into the distance, unconscious and with most of her bones broken.

"Forge Magic: True Spell..." Rarity chanted, with Applejack Looking straight into her eyes.

Because while Rainbow Dash hadn't managed much, her efforts still bought enough time for the other Knights to start trying to counter attack. Fluttershy and Twilight were preparing something big, but Applejack and Rarity could go immediately. And what they did was the best teamwork spell they had managed to develop.

During the whole battle, Applejack's Eyes had gathered as much information as they could on Chrysalis, and while most of the time she was the only one who could make use of it, that particular spell was an exception. In it, Rarity used her various artefacts as focus and base for a multitude of spells, that were then customized in real time by the information received from Applejack.

It was magic designed specifically to match their current opponent. It was Rarity's Forge Magic used to forge spells instead of artefacts.

And Rarity teleported, replacing herself with the air beside Chrysalis, and slashed with a sword of fire, which was boosted and synchronized by several other spells, managing to rake across Chrysalis' body, harming her much more than Dash's last attack had managed, in spite of being several leagues less powerful.

Chrysalis responded by swinging with her mist in another near inescapable blow, which Rarity flowed around like water, riding on the edge of the attack. She slashed with her fire sword again, and while Chrysalis tried to dodge away, she found herself rooted to her spot, courtesy of earth manacles around her legs that interfered even with her space manipulation.

And so it continued for a whole seven more exchanges, lasting around four seconds in total, as Rarity fought almost like she could see the future. But the difference in power between the two was just too large, so that was the limit even for such a strategy.

And in the perfect moment, when Chrysalis was about to catch the Knight, Applejack acted:

"Myriad Steps: Chaotic Wandering..." She called, and stepped into nothingness.

Chrysalis recoiled as if struck, sparing Rarity from being hit with an attack. Applejack had just struck her... from within her own mist.

Chrysalis' chaotic shapeshifting was undoubtedly powerful, but exactly because it was chaotic, she did not have perfect control over it, allowing Applejack to slip inside like it was one of the chaotic spaces of her fellow Knights. And while she could not target Chrysalis' heart directly, she could hit close enough to be effective.

Chrysalis' mist slashed around Applejack's position, but she had already stepped towards another part of it, showing the real ability of her Myriad Steps. And of course, Rarity used that very momentary distraction to score another hit on the changeling queen.

And so the two teamed up on Chrysalis, one from the inside and the other from the outside, acting in perfect harmony. Neither of them thought that they could defeat her like that, but Twilight and Fluttershy had asked for them to buy as much time as possible.

In the end, the two managed to keep it going for ten more seconds before Chrysalis broke through it, screeching gutturally as she forced her mist into a cutting hurricane that caused heavy injuries on herself, but almost killed the two Knights.

Thankfully, it had been enough time.

"Trance Mode: Harmony Shift..." Fluttershy called.

The whole world seemed to stop for a moment, as she took a breath that seemed to be echoed by existence itself. Her magic and the magic of the environment mixed together seamlessly, and the resulting energy spread around the whole field, ready to be tapped.

Considering that was both magically powerful and skilled in harmonizing with the environment, learning Trance mode was a no-brainer. However, the original version of the technique would not help much, as the increase in power wasn't enough to justify the effort. So, she instead tried to develop as customized version of it.

The result of her attempts was the Harmony Shift. Instead of simply absorbing energy from the outside, she created a harmony between inside and outside, both making the power she could access much stronger than normal, and also allowing her to keep recharging herself with outside power.

The visible result of the technique was that Fluttershy's appearance changed to the point where her entire body seemed to have turned into crystal that shined like starlight. She took advantage of the momentary weakness of Chrysalis upon generating that powerful hurricane and flew at her in a tackle faster than she had ever managed to move in her life. Fluttershy followed it up by grabbing onto the changeling queen and locking down her movements with every drop of her enhanced power.

Because her role in the plan wasn't in attacking Chrysalis, but in allowing Twilight to do so.

"Magical Sign: Soul Counterpoint." Said unicorn declared.

The feeling of that spell was just as impressive as Fluttershy's, only instead of causing her to become one with the world, Twilight's spell seemed to cause it to vanish, leaving only two things in existence: Twilight and Chrysalis. In that single moment amidst nothingness, Twilight Changed.

It wasn't a visible change, as both her shape and color remained the same, but her atmosphere seemed to have changed, and if one compared her to just before, Twilight seemed to have become less lively and energetic, in favor of becoming more focused, her eyes fixed to her opponent and not moving at all, even to breathe.

That was the magic Twilight had been trying to develop for literal years, with only recently making some progress. It was not yet complete, being only a much simplified version of the real thing, but it was already a shockingly powerful bit of magic.

The unicorn took a step forward, and the space itself seemed to part in her way, allowing her to to reach Chrysalis in that one step. And then she punched, and her punch was implacable like a force of nature, tearing through Chrysalis's body like it was made of clay, while leaving Fluttershy's magic alone.

The Changeling Queen screamed louder than they thought possible, horribly injured by the attack. The Soul Counterpoint was similar to Fluttershy's Soul Emulate, except that instead of immitating the opponent, it worked by becoming their reverse. And it just happened that the reverse of Chrysalis' chaotic shapeshifting was order magic to turn one's body into an immutable and implacable existence.

All that had taken place during the brief period Chrysalis was vulnerable, but then she started to counter attack. Her first hit was already exceedingly vicious, as her mist shifted into a saw of mismatched weapons, all spinning at high speeds and directing their full energy to the edge, trying to cut through Fluttershy.

The pegasus endured, even as she started to feel the interior of her body squirming due to the pressure it was under. During that, Twilight kept punching her opponent, as if trying to tear her to pieces with her bare hooves. That made Chrysalis panic, and she unleashed her Banshee's Wail.

That had been the attack to take down Fluttershy on their previous fight, but the pegasus was now far stronger than before. She refused to let even a single strand of magic-empowered sound go through her barrier, enduring everything to allow Twilight to keep attacking... And when that second attack was over, Fluttershy was still holding on, weakened but not defeated.

And Twilight was still tearing through Chrysalis. And the changeling queen realized that she could actually lose that fight. And she refused to let that happen. With a screech that didn't resemble any creature under the sun, Chrysalis attacked for a third time, but instead of just using her mist, Chrysalis shifted her whole body, briefly losing any living parts as she explosively turned into a spiked ball.

That was, at last, too much for Fluttershy, as her magic was not just broken but annihilated, and her body was sent flying away, covered in injuries. And yet Twilight did not stop attacking. She knew that Fluttershy was going to be fine, and she knew that she had to make her efforts worth it.

Finally freed, Chrysalis teleported away on instinct, trying to get some distance, but Twilight simply stepped again to get back in range, and punched once more. The changeling queen counter-attacked, her body now half turned into mist (the left half), her eyes had regenerated at some point after Applejack's defeat, and the only eye she had at that point was glaring at Twilight with rage mixed with desperation.

Her attack was a thousand malformed blades driving down at her opponent, all of the mist she had focused on that effort. And Twilight received the blow as if it were a feather. Her body had been made indestructible by the magic, to the point where not even her skin was cut.

Thus began a bizarre parody of a slugfest, as one side (which only had half a body) attacked with massive storms of shapes and objects without causing any reaction on the other side, which in turn used only normal punches but managed to tear through the enemy's body without fail, requiring continuous healing on Chrysalis' part.

And yet, contrary to all appearances, after only a few seconds of that, the one to fall was actually Twilight, her magic pushed far beyond her limits to keep her invincibility in the face of the attacks of a far stronger opponent. With that, Chrysalis was finally allowed time to breathe, which she used to restore her body to normal, and then she looked around.

And saw that her target was back from wherever it was she had went. Venus was on the ground only a few hundred meters away. Chrysalis barely registered the other figures nearby, as she dove and accelerated towards the pegasus. But Venus had already been moving at that time, and it was more than enough for her to reach over and touch the unicorn next to her, who in a powerful burst of magic, created a shield.

It was a magical shield that grew far beyond what would be necessary to defend the two, but Chrysalis could not doubt its effectiveness, as it stopped her charge cold and endured her follow up massive attack with barely a ripple. And then the changeling queen realized the true purpose of the shield. It wasn't just to protect Venus and her companions, but to protect the entire constructed town, leaving no buildings uncovered.

And outside of that shield there was only Chrysalis... And Knight Sunset Shimmer.

By that point, the plan was obvious, preventing her from harming any civillians while the Knight took her down. And with the changeling queen hurt from the previous fight, she actually had a real shot at it. Well, that just wouldn't do, would it?

"Blood Sacrifice..." Chrysalis intoned.

+0+

Meanwhile the fight at ground level between the guards and the changelings was almost over. Most of the bug-ponies had been taken down, with only a few stragglers managing to hold on, mostly through hiding and guerilla tactics, but all in all the ponies had things well in hand.

However, it was still a shock when a few of the guards heard loud screeches of pain and followed them to find uncloaked changelings twitching on the ground in various places. An even bigger shock was reserved for the guards tasked with keeping an eye on the defeated and bound changelings, because they too began to screech and twitch in pain.

The guards didn't know what that meant, but they knew that it couldn't be anything good.

+0+

Chrysalis felt the love energy of her subjects flowing through her, restoring her injuries. She would have to reward them appropriately later, but once she had Venus is her grasp, that would not be difficult. She could tell that Sunset was attacking her, but that wasn't enough to stop her recovery.

It only took a few seconds for the changeling queen to be restored back to her peak.