//------------------------------//
// Army of Chaos 
// Story: Knights of the Realm 
// by Kinni 
//------------------------------//

There was no ground, or rather, the closest thing they had to ground was a gigantic cloud made of gold threads. Said cloud had replaced the ground as far as their eyes could see (except Applejack's Eyes), but if that was the only strange thing, it would be far from enough to actually stun the Knights.

No, the thing that truly caused them pause was the veritable army they were now facing. Even the swarm of chaotic constructs that had emerged on their way there was simply far from the number of enemies that they could see after entering the area below the cloud. And the worst part was, those weren't like the simple constructs, instead, each and every one of them was a chaotic monster built around a living thing.

That was, in a word, unoptimal. It would have been far worse without the anti-chaos measures undertaken, for the chaotic monsters created around intelligent beings such as ponies were the most dangerous kind, but even those "lesser" ones were already difficult to handle, specially at such ridiculous numbers.

The Cloud of Chaos had advanced through a great expanse of land, and seeming picked up every living being in the way to turn into chaotic monsters. As expected, their appearances were quite varied, but it was still possible to see that they mostly came from three different sources.

Out of those, the one with the least amount of members seemed to have been made primarily from fish. It was obvious that those were fish coming from the river that had fallen under the influence of the chaos. Those creatures could be distinguished because they all had something related to water on their appearances, be it gills or fins in unlikely places, pieces of their bodies containing water such as one with a fishbowl head, or simply a general shape and color that reminded one of the sea.

As for the other two, which had quite a lot more members, it was equally clear that they had originally been plants and insects, respectively. That wasn't strange either, considering the amount of living things on those two categories, and they also had some distinct characteristics of their original forms, such as wings and bark, but the easiest way to tell them apart was actually something quite different: Their positions.

The plant based monsters were monstly attached to the "ground" in various ways, while the insect based monsters appeared to have decided that they really liked the air, with nearly every one of them having taken up flight in some form, some with wings of all kinds of shapes, some having created propellers, both biological and artificial, and others simply foregoing any kind of actual propulsion and simply standing or swimming in the air.

That included even insects that usually couldn't fly, with some of the monsters being recognizable as former ants and such.

There was a huge pregnant pause in which the Knights and the chaotic monsters faced each other without moving a muscle (even the wind construct had stopped moving), then Rainbow Dash flapped her wings violently and dispersed the chaos infused construct at the same time as Pinkie and Twilight stopped their little game. It had done its purpose, and taken them close to their target.

Though, as it turned out, not that close "Applejack, how far have we drifted from our original destination?" Trixie asked.

She did so because, even though they had entered the cloud in a part that was very close to its edge, the Knight's current position seemed to be closer to the center of it, with them being unable to see the edge of the Cloud (though part of it was undoubtedly due to their lines of sight being messed up inside so much chaos).

"A good bit." She replied "And space is all messed up, so it'll be hard to reach there."

"Could you bring us there fast?" Sunset asked.

"Ah think Ah could barely reach there fast mahself, so nope." Applejack said.

"Then we're just gonna have to go slow and steady, hihi." Twilight giggled, tilting her head to an abnormal degree "So Pinkie, I'll protect the rear. You lead the way!"

"Sure thing, teach!" Pinkie replied, saluting with a hand on a stick "Okay everyone, get behind me and show off your moves, we're gonna conga!"

That exchange completed, both Twilight and Pinkie split into multiple copies, which spread all around the perimeter.

It took a second for most of the Knights to understand what that meant, but the reason for that was simply: Space was so distorted by chaos that front and rear were everywhere simultaneously.

Also, Twilight and Pinkie were acting loopier than usual, but that was already expected. That was so much chaos around them that trying to maintain perfect focus would drain their energy incredibly fast. Conversely, even without deliberately trying to use the chaotic slipstream technique, the two would be able to execute great feats of chaos magic without consuming much energy, as long as they did not fight too much against the current.

And they were good enough to do so and still maintain control.

At that point, free time was over, and the gigantic mass of chaotic creatures advanced into them like a flood, trying to drown the Knights under a sea of bodies. Applejack was the first to move, stepping behind one of the Pinkies and shouting "Everypony, choose one!" before pulling her hoof back and unleashing a punch at the air.

Said punch seemed to spread randomly around the battlefield, its form changing in different places. Over a dozen chaotic creatures were hit, some by an actual impact, others by razor wind, while others seemed to have been attacked by something completely different.

Clearly, Applejack had no issues with dealing with such a chaotic environment.

The other Knights followed her advice and braced themselves for impact, just before the main mass of enemies collapsed on top of them.

Calling what followed "chaotic", while seemingly obvious, was actually not that accurate. Instead, it was more like a bubble of order inside of an ocean of chaos. Both Twilight and Pinkie's actions seemed to blur together, as they hit and blocked the enemies with all sorts of chaotic effects, but their unity of purpose made it so it all seemed harmonious, the enemies recoiling in sync, and the colors and shapes of the attacks mixing perfectly.

All in all, it looked like a force field around the group, a strangely-shaped force field, but undeniably effective.

Adding to that were the efforts of the other Knights. Sunset was giving right to the expression "attack is the best defense", and was unleashing Tartarus at everything in view, bombarding the battlefield with so many destructive spells it resembled a starry sky. Fluttershy had realized defense was mostly taken care of, so she used Soul Emulate on Sunset and followed her example, adding even more mayhem to the situation. The fact that their attacks kept going in unpredictable directions due to the chaos warped space didn't matter because there were so many enemies they couldn't possibly miss.

Rainbow Dash had closed her eyes and was relying solely on her intuition, flying around at crazy speeds through the strange warped space, which made it look like she was teleporting. The pegasus evaded being hit by enemies or the indiscriminate bombarding of her allies, destroying chaotic monsters simply by way of her magic infused wake, but frequently returning to the center to "follow" her Pinkie. Applejack was matching her by dint of the Eyes of Truth, moving around the battlefield like it was her own farm and supplementing the indiscriminate attacks of Sunset and Fluttershy with pinpoint precision hits on dangerous opponents that were charging up group attacks or doing something else she couldn't abide.

As for the last two, Rarity and Trixie? They had taken upon themselves the task of being responsible for everypony. The illusionist was surrounded by a veritable hypercube of magic lenses, apparently keeping watch on the status of both the environment and her companions by way of an overkill level of analysis magic that managed to overcome even that incredible chaos. The artificer, on the other hand, had stabbed one sword into the "ground" and the other into the air, using them to forcefully keep their terrain at a low level of harmfulness, and to keep the chaotic energy in the space from interfering with the other's efforts.

Those last parts require some elaboration. As mentioned previously, the ground had ceased to be ground, and while the Knights could stand on the result, the chaotic energy infused into it seemed to have a grudge against them, and was constantly trying to "attack" them by turning into corrosive substances, poison, extreme temperatures and similar stuff, not to mention hiding chaotic monsters so they could ambush the Knights from underground, and Rarity had to keep things from going too far.

As to the air, since the Knights had a good deal of resistance against the chaotic energy around them and it would be difficult to disturb their actions indirectly, said chaotic energy was trying to condense itself into direct effects while right on top of them, and even the chaotic Knights were unable to prevent that from happening. Because of that, Rarity had to be constantly manipulating the air currents to disperse the chaotic energy any time it reached dangerous levels of concentration.

In both of those things, Rarity was helped by Trixie's analysis.

With all of that, it would be natural to think that the Knights weren't going to have too much issue handling the enemies, and that the main problem would be getting through everything without exhausting themselves. However, that was far from the truth.

It should not be forgotten that those were not merely constructs, but real chaotic monsters, the type of which had given trouble to the Knights in a previous mission (though that was overshadowed by Sombra's schemes). Those weren't quite at that level, due to not having had intelligent being around as they were created to serve as the cores, but that was more than made up for by both the sheer amount of those monsters and the chaotic miasma in the air powering them up.

The chaos-using Knights couldn't use that power to the same extent due to the need for keeping control, but the extra power they had access to was still essentially the main reason for the group to be able to resist such an overwhelming force. A lot of really big and powerful enemies kept being bounced back by their chaotic defense, which steadfastly allowed the other Knights to do their jobs.

Applejack's pinpoint attacks and Rainbow Dash's intuition-guided strikes disrupted some of the efforts of the biggest threats, but there were so many all at once that they couldn't truly take them down, always having to move on to another target as soon as they did anything. Sunset and Flutershy's destructive spells carried a lot of power, but very few enemies were actually destroyed by them, due to their large numbers splitting the power enough for their strengthened forms to endure.

Finally, Trixie and Rarity's cooperation served as a hidden second layer of defense to keep the delicate balance by preventing the Knights from being disrupted by unexpected threats, but there were so many and so powerful of those that the two were having a hard time keeping themselves from being overwhelmed.

The situation was almost a standstill, which would force the Knights to expend more power to break through and worsening the situation for the rest of the mission, but thankfully enough, it hadn't quite reached that level, because Pinkie suddenly started moving.

Or rather, she marched in place while the world seemed to move around her (or them, given her many copies), forcing the other Knights to reposition constantly to keep themselves "following" her. Just as Twilight had asked, Pinkie Pie was leading the way towards the core of that chaos, their true target.

The space was too warped for any of them except Applejack to truly see the progress they were making towards that objective, but their movement meant they weren't trying to handle the chaotic wave while stationary, but moving along with it, which reduced the pressure on all parts of their defence.

Suddenly, things were clickling. Their attacks had become more effective and their defenses were holding up better, all of it allowing the Knights to do things a little more effectively. That became a vicious cycle, soon allowing Pinkie's march to become faster, and thus everything else got better again.

But of course, there was no way things would be that simple. Not when such high concentrations of chaos were involved. Seeing that their current strategy wasn't working, the countless chaotic monsters decided that a simple advantage in numbers wasn't enough, so they started fusing together.

And it wasn't just some patchwork fusions either, the resulting entities could almost be considered harmonious in the combination of their traits and body types. If asked about it, Twilight would say "If chaos couldn't do something orderly once in a while, wouldn't that be too predictable?", but all of the Knights present already understood that, so the question wasn't asked.

Going back to the monsters, once again it was quite easy to divide them based on groups. Many were the result of monsters of the same "origin" joining together, and as such were naturally "compatible", mostly seeming like bigger or stronger versions of the original enemies. Things got interesting in the other cases, however.

The fish and insects morphs seemed to have taken inspiration from abyssal creatures. They were still reasonably fishlike, but had taken on shells, stingers, compound eyes, multiple skittering legs as well as several more  insectoid features. Worse than that was the simple matter of their incompatible origins being "resolved" in strange ways. Sometimes the fishes opened their mouths to reveal huge insects inside, sometimes the two types seemed to split into "horse" and "rider" such as a gigantic beetle carrying an aquarium full of sharks, sometimes they kept shifting between different forms or were separate bodies joined by strings. It was weird.

Then there were the fish and plants. Those reminded the watchers of the term symbiosis. Fishes with armor made of plant-like coral, or hardened bones of pseudo-wood. Plants with roots and leaves that were nothing but schools of fish that could detach and reattach themselves at will, as well as the more "normal" versions that resembled underwater plantlife. All those observations about resolving incompatible origins also applied to them as well, with monsters made of more balanced mixes of creature types sported the same sense of strange duality.

After that was the biggest group of the mixes, plants and insects. They were remarkably compatible, often it being difficult to determine where the plant stopped and insect started and vice-versa. Leaves would suddenly reveal compound eyes on close inspection, insect shells looked like bark, and that was not even getting into the fact that many real insects already looked like plants. All in all, it was like looking at a window into another world, one with strange but familiar life forms.

Finally, there was the smallest group, which was made of the few chaotic mashups that included all three "types". They were immediately recognizable by the simple fact that they looked astoundingly powerful. Three were incomprehensibly huge, the warped space showing them from several angles but never managing to capture their entire forms. And those shapes seemed to have warped right past the chaotic threshold to harmonic and then kept going, turning into existences that seemed to have a certain logic to their design, but one that was completely alien to the world. Wings, bark, scales, eyes, and all those features had ceased to exist, or rather been replaced by things that served the same functions in completely different ways. Those entities could still be recognized as part plant, insect and fish, even though they looked nothing like any of them.

Four more were exceedingly small, and looked like relatively normal fishes, only downsized. Yet, they looked just as powerful as their gigantic counterparts, the fishes having powerful auras that could not be ignored, auras that brought to mind both insects and plants, a feeling of nature that was like the planet itself had become aware, and was hostile. The last two were pony-sized and shaped, but a closer look revealed that they were in fact made of parts of all three different types of beings, which had been fixed together in such a way as to look like eyes, mane, coat, legs and everything else an actual pony had. Both were earth ponies, by the way.

Those nine creatures immediately became the main focus of attention of the Knights, due to their obvious power, but at the same time the protectors of Equestria were already looking out for the trick. They knew that, given the nature of chaos, at least two of those would be a lot weaker than they seemed, and some of the "normal" ones would surprise them by bursting with power at the most innoportune moment.

Regardless, despite how long it took to describe all of it, everything happened in mere seconds, and then the resulting chaotic armada attacked. And if their previous attack had been like a tsunami, this new one was more like an alicorn shooting a barrage of attack spells. It would be absolutely overwhelming... Except they had chosen the wrong opponents.

An appropriate expression would be "showing one's slight skill before a master". Because the chaotic monsters had become stronger by joining their forces, but in that particular aspect, the ponies were far, far superior.

"Fire and Wind: Grand Domain." Rarity chanted "Primordial Storm."

And the entire environment immediately around the Knights briefly became a perfect bubble of harmony, as the air was heated to almost plasma temperature, creating a terrifying weather formation that could destroy a city in an instant, but was actually just the prelude for their next move.

"True Soul: Flame Storm." Rainbow Dash declared.

The pegasus interfaced with the artificial extreme weather condition, enhancing it and shifting her own nature based on it. But it wasn't the same as the Primordial Shift she had used on the fight against Chrysalis. That was a much deeper change on both her soul and nature, and it wasn't something Rainbow Dash could control. But it was a teamwork technique, so she didn't need to.

As the pegasus changed, Rarity's magic changed along with it, and she carefully guided the change based on the principles of artificing, thus preventing Dash from losing herself and dissipating into nothingness. Instead, her body was rebuilt from the ground up. That was a skill inspired by the bond magic of the Crusaders, where one pony could let themselves go by trusting that the other would keep them safe. At that moment, the pegasus had lost most of her memories and sense of self, with the only things remaining being will, power and trust in her partner.

Rarity would not betray that trust, and the new body formed for the pegasus was far more perfect than anything she had ever been able to do herself. Instead of a paradoxical existence propped up by magic, Rainbow Dash had become a new form of living being. The shape was the same as a pony, but not a normal one, instead it was like if Dash was the pony equivalent of another dimension, one made of heat, fire, gas and motion. Even at the very core of the sun, such a being would be right at home.

Her eyes seemed deeper and more solid, while still having the same consistency of normal eyes, for their material was now a pasty liquid with densities far exceeding any normal substance in existence. Her ears were slightly bigger, with small hurricanes forming and disappearing around them, filtering out undesirable elements while allowing a powerful sense of hearing. Her nose seemed lighter and more fragile, but that was mere appearance, as it allowed her to breathe normally some of the most dangerous and unstable gases and acids that could only exist on extreme environments.

Her mane and coat were still made of strands of fur, except the roots of the fur were exceedingly dense and fused with her body and each other in a complex system that served like a second skeleton, while the outside parts were light and airy to the point where they would be almost impossible to damage due to simply flowing around any possible threats, and not only that, but they also served as a conduit of power that Rainbow could use to absorb energy from the environment.

Her wings seemed to grow and shrink with every heartbeat, which was close enough to what actually happened, as they in fact changed shape based on the very energy of her life. The feathers seemed to draw everything around towards themselves, becoming the focus of the sight of any who laid eyes on them. Their power and movement seemed to tell the world that everything would eventually be consumed by them.

Finally there were her colors, which seemed to be a combination of her previous appearance (mostly the rainbow mane) with an almost implacable purity of whites and blacks, looking like an ideal carved into life.

Rarity could not think of her in any way but as a "masterpiece", and felt proud of being able to take part in such a creation, only tempered by the fact that she knew that form wasn't truly made by her, but called into existence by Rainbow Dash's own instinct and ideal of the power of the weather, and she had simply revealed its shape to the world.

Still, that was enough for her.

Proving just how little control Rainbow Dash had over her new form was the fact that she was now incapable of actually using her intuition, so instead the transformed pegasus took position above the Knights and started repeatedly flapping her wings, pure heat and magical power being released to block the multitude of attacks that were coming at them. And with Dash taking up the defense, the others could focus on attacking.

"Grand Chaotic Infusion!" Twilight declared with an insane smile, all her bodies doing backflips and touching their horns in a single point in the air "Force Drive!"

An astonishingly huge column of pure chaos magic erupted inversely from them, falling like a mountain-sized lightning bolt and hitting Sunset Shimmer, who closed her eyes and chanted slowly.

"Chaotic Trance... Void Channel..." And she started drinking in the powerful chaotic energy like a hole had been dug at the bottom of an ocean.

She was using the same technique she used to channel the power of the sun. It wasn't nearly as powerful, but given just how much chaotic power there was around, it would be more than effective enough. And it was also much easier to channel, which said something about the sheer power of the sun, considering it was harder to handle than even such chaotic energy (of course, the fact that Twilight had "refined" it for infusion helped).

Sunset's body and armor changed in a different way than in her Essence Drive. Wings of bone and shell forcefully erupted from her back, which would have been quite painful had she actually been paying attention to her body instead of to the energy itself. Her eyes became compounded, and her horn became a lot sharper and red like blood. From within her flesh, veins of black tar emerged and violently pierced into her armor, forcefully fusing with it (thankfully, Rarity wasn't looking, or she would be very upset). Said armor started to look alive, beating with a heart of its own, and becoming fleshy, with vein like red markings engraving themselves upon it.

With all that done, Sunset had to choose how to innaugurate her new power, and so she remembered the technique the Crusaders had used on their previous mission, so she decided to imitate it.

"Severing Chaos!" She shouted joyfully, swinging her head as she created a blade above her horn.

It was much less refined than the one made by the Crusaders, mostly due to a lack of Rarity's talent in the equation. It was slightly curved and with some bumps that would definitely render it completely useless as an actual sword, however there was much more power crammed into it than what the Crusaders had used.

Much, much more.

If there was anypony who happened to be watching from outer space with a powerful enough sight to see the top of the cloud of chaos, they would have noticed the entire thing shake and a crescent-shaped cut mark appear on it, one that was as big as a mountain range.

From the inside, the effect was just as impressive, as the warped space made it so that instead of a cut, it seemed like somepony had dropped a bomb on the battlefield, causing absolute chaos and devastation everywhere, wiping out at least a third of the combined chaotic monsters temporarily.

Trixie seemed to take such display as a challenge. She raised her head to the air and started chanting a massively complicated series of spells at speeds that no ordinary pony would be able to follow, let alone replicate, regardless of how much of a motor mouth they were. That wasn't entirely showing off, because most ways of casting multiple complex spells quickly (such as casting a spell specifically to cast other spells) were very easy to be disrupted in a chaotic environment.

Still, at least part of it was showing off. Regardless, the effect of her spells started becoming apparent quite quickly, creating a golden arch of power that contained a sort of layer of magical energy that was constantly in motion. Trixie glanced at Fluttershy, who then began to do her own part in the technique.

"Empathy Link." She declared, and her magic, which was already being used to link all eight of the Knights, suddenly grew an additional connection, one which didn't have the same purposes of communication and assistance as the other one, but simply allowed them to get a "feel" for each other. That was important, and it was the easy part.

Fluttershy followed it up by running under the arch, through the magical layer, and then both ponies declared the magic together:

"Grand Illusion: Shared Empathy!"

And the golden arch exploded, releasing rays of light that hit five of the most powerful chaotic beings they had been facing with. And with some very careful and precise magic control from both Trixie and Fluttershy, the result was that those particular chaotic beings started to emit a very familiar presence: They felt just like the Knights.

Of course, they were immediately dogpiled by the many chaotic beings around.

Naturally, the last two Knights were no slouches either. Applejack, who had the Eyes of Truth, and Pinkie Pie, who was currently focused on guiding them to the center, both realized something important simultaneously: As a side effect of all those chaotic monsters fusing together, they had unintentionally fused together a lot of the chaotic space distortions. That made them stronger, but their lesser number also meant they were easier to understand.

The two were not about to miss such an opportunity. They nodded to each other, Pinkie (the main one) with a wide grin and Applejack with a small smirk, then they moved.

"Eyes of Truth: Pathmaker." Applejack declared, unleashing her power.

That was Applejack's current future-seeing magic, and the fact that she could use it even in the middle of such high concentrations of chaos was proof of how fast the Knights were growing, considering it wasn't that long before when Sombra had disrupted that ability using much less chaos. Still, Applejack's future-seeing was currently limited, but it was enough for her purposes.

"Myriad Truths: Follow the Steps!" She shouted, and then rushed forward.

Each of her steps went beyond distance, moving upon the path predestined by her Eyes, the course set to do exactly what she needed. Moving around the countless enemies, punching both monsters and the very chaotic distortions that only her Eyes could see. She was "preparing the stage" as it were, her actions choreographed and flowing with no hindrance whatsoever.

Beautiful, though it wasn't perfect. Going through so many powerful enemies was a difficult proposition, and even with her future-sight, Applejack could not avoid injuries, being scorched by fire and acid, cut through by sharp objects of all descriptions, and hit by all kinds of blows. And yet, nothing could dissuade her from the path, and it wasn't really like she wouldn't be able to avoid them, it was just that it would take even more power and concentration to create a better path, far too much to be worth it.

What she was doing was enough. All of those injuries were light, after all.

Meanwhile, Pinkie was doing the opposite, and was just standing in place and whispering magic words ominously. Her shadows started becoming bigger and darker, which was specially notable because no one else seemed to even have shadows, considering they were under a cloud.

Those shadows fused together and started expanding even more rapidly, becoming a veritable abyss of darkness that spread under the Knights. Then that abyss winked.

"Shadow Devouring." Pinkie declared the most powerful shadow spell she knew.

The abyss of shadow opened like a mouth and snapped closed, devouring a castle's worth of "land" where the Knights had been standing. All of Pinkie's bodies were smashed back together and she had to shake her head to clear up the feedback. Then Pinkie clapped her forehooves and the new shadow "land" stood up on hundreds of small legs and started skittering forward while carrying the Knights.

It was time to break through everything and reach the core of the Cloud of Chaos.

However, the army of enemies were not going to make it easy. Despite their combinations having given the advantage to the Knights, the enemies quickly adapted. Monsters with mirror-like shells or other defenses joined together to defend against the chaotic sword swipes from Sunset, to which she only partially adapted by detaching her head and growing another one several times, multiplying the number of attacks she could use at once.

In terms of attack, the chaotic monsters lined up in several files, looking like an ant bridge shaped like a spider web that forced its way even through the melting defenses of primordial fire Rainbow Dash, and forcing the Knights inside to defend themselves as well. Once again, Rainbow and Rarity's efforts in creating mines of lava to serve as traps were enough to reduce the pressure of the attacks, but not to prevent them entirely.

Trixie and Fluttershy's empathic illusion quickly lost effect, forcing them to create increasingly powerful and energy-intensive illusions of Knights that "felt" real in order to keep a good portion of the enemies distracted, but they were quickly approaching the point of diminishing returns.

And of course, there were also enemies trying their best to hinder the movement of the Knight's transportation, featuring all sorts of barriers and the highlight of chaotic creatures "unweaving" the "ground" in the direction they wanted to go, which forced the shadow ride into skittering on thin air, severely limiting its mobility.

As soon as it became clear that they wouldn't quite be able to make it to the core before being overwhelmed, Sunset decided to take matters into her own hooves.

"Unleash Chaos." She declared, causing Twilight to gasp in shock and quickly stop all of the multitude of spells she was using to help Sunset channel all that chaos.

Said Knight started breathing in to a colossal degree, except that instead of air, she was sucking in chaos, her body quickly bloating up and growing serpentine as she drew in more and more of it.

'Guess we're gonna need to do it from here, then.' Pinkie thought, as she slowed down her shadow and let go of the chaotic energy of the environment she was channeling, allowing Sunset to suck it all up.

'Gah! Ah need to recalculate everything again!' Applejack was thinking frantically and looking at every single change that was occuring to each bit of chaos in range from now to three seconds later, trying to determine a possible route for their final rush.

"!" Sunset managed the linguistic feat of vocalizing an exclamation mark. Sending a soundless wave of intensity energized with an avalanche of chaos.

It was enough to force every single monster of the chaotic army back five steps (or the equivalent), and breaking space to such an extent it would take concerted effort to repair. But they would have to deal with that later.

"Pathmaker!" Applejack declared, her eyes turning into pinpricks from the effort, but she managed to comunicate the route to Twilight.

"Chaotic Channel: Follow the Path!" Twilight waved her horn like a conductor, creating an invisible path made of the twisting space in order to force all that free flowing chaotic energy into a relatively stable form.

And the chaos forced itself through the channel, like a waterfall combined with a sinkhole, moving back and forth before driving itself below the shadow and carrying it while it changed form.

Perhaps it was inevitable that it would take the form of Discord, resulting in the very bizarre sight of a draconequs carrying a solid shadow that carried the Knights.

The group bulled through everything, rushing towards their goal, while Sunset (back to normal) shook her head and tried to purge the remnants of chaos from her system.

She succeeded, but as it turned out... That didn't matter.

Finally, the group managed to reach the core of the Cloud of Chaos, which was immediately obvious when a light appeared just above them that looked just like that moment when the sun started peeking above the horizon. The light touched all of them.

"Hihihi..." A giggle resounded "Essence Heart!" It was Sunset.

All the other Knights quickly dashed away as the unicorn started to channel the power of the sun just like she had done in the fight against Chrysalis. The only difference being that her eyes had turned into mad spirals.

The fact was, even with Sunset having removed all the foreign chaos in her system to give no advantages to the enemy, the core of the Cloud of Chaos was still powerful enough to possess her anyway.