//------------------------------//
// Tirek, the Desperate Struggle 
// Story: Knights of the Realm 
// by Kinni 
//------------------------------//

If there was any silver lining to the current situation for the Knights, it would be the fact that draining the magic of two of them would not result in an immediate power increase for Tirek. He would need time to "digest" the magic, and would be unable to do it while still in battle. That was a rule that had never been broken even once in all the recorded fights against the centaur.

What it would do, however, would be to restore Tirek's energy, thus making it much harder to simply outlast him. That made all the injuries they had inflicted on him up to that point far more important, as wearing down the opponent with repeated injuries was still just as feasible as before.

However, the situation was still quite bad, considering they had barely managed to hold back Tirek when they had all their members, and now they were down two Knights. So there was really only one option for them, and the first one to act on it was Fluttershy.

"Trance Mode... Overshift!" She declared.

The difference from the previous Trance Mode was obvious. Instead of simply being an amazing aura of power, it was an emanation of energy that could even be called aggressive, power condensed to such an extent it had acquired a physical presence that crushed everything around it.

It was a white mass wrapped around Fluttershy that flowed like a river so gigantic you couldn't see one shore from the other. It flowed extremely slowly, to the point one could almost believe it was stationary, but the amount flowing was so terrifyingly large it possessed a momentum that could reshape the land and bring down mountains.

The pegasus launched herself towards Tirek, attacking with such strength he preferred to ward off the blows instead of taking them head on, but she just kept pressuring him, unwilling to waste even a second.

She could not afford to. While this wasn't essentially suicide the way the Forbidden Shift used by Flames of Annihilation was, the side-effects of pushing the technique beyond the level the body could stand meant it pretty much put a time limit on Fluttershy's participation in the battle, and not a long one.

Still, as mentioned before, doing such things was the only option for the Knights. Going back to the analogy of the tightrope, losing two of their members was like someone had set fire to the rope, and the fire would quickly reach them. That meant they could no longer carefully walk forward step by step, they had to run forward with all they had, but that made their chances of falling increase dramatically.

But if they wanted even the smallest chance of victory, then they had to start using their last resorts, and the second one to do so was Fluttershy's fellow apprentice: Pinkie Pie.

"Dual Essence. Sadness and Hope. 200% Emotion Charge." She declared in a solemn voice.

Two opposing auras, one was a dark blue while the other was a light blue, both erupted on her body at the same time.

Then she started moving, but it wasn't in any normal way. Her hooves weren't touching the ground, and she looked like something invisible was dragging her by the neck. And every few seconds, she disappeared and reappeared a bit forward.

All in all, it was very weird.

Soon enough, she got close to the point where Tirek was struggling with the relentless attacks of Fluttershy. Then she stopped and proceeded to... Blink. Which somehow caused giant blue hooves to start manifesting from thin air and start to bombard Tirek with even more attacks. They disappeared after a blow, but there were always new ones being made, so the attacks were continuous.

It was easy to see what Pinkie's combination of powers was doing. She was usually incapable of moving while in the space-warping sadness state, but the mixing of hope into it allowed her to do so, even if it was in a very makeshift way. And that also allowed her to unleash hope contruct attacks at a distance via spatial manipulation.

However, just like in Fluttershy's case, there was a reason why she hadn't used that earlier in the fight. It was also a double-edged sword that could not be maintained for long. But while Fluttershy's issue was that her body wouldn't be able to endure for too long, the limitation on Pinkie's technique was how long her mind could endure.

In order to use two Emotion Charges at once, Pinkie had to double herself. And it wasn't like the basic clones she sometimes made, which had barely any sense of self, she needed a full and complete second her. She didn't actually make another body, but just a second mind to act as the user of the second emotion charge.

Splitting oneself like that was extremely difficult and painful, and the earth pony was feeling like her very soul had been stretched to the breaking point. And both selves were also doing techniques which were very demanding on the mind, which only made things even worse.

And the side-effects would start affecting her even faster than Fluttershy, since the burden on her mind would soon reach a point where it would negatively affect her decision-making ability.

Tirek had been briefly taken off guard by the combination of violence, resilience and trickiness of their attacks, specially since, as fellow apprentices, the two worked together in amazing harmony. However, that didn't last for long, and he quickly rallied.

"Shadow
(The Abyss Extends Its Hands...)				
Rift!"

At that point, Tirek's shadow opened its eye, or at least that's the closest one could get to describe what happened. It wavered as if it was changing, and it did actually change, but in such an incredibly subtle way that even the acute senses of the Knights barely caught it. (Applejack would have been able to notice more, had she still been up and fighting)

It was still dark, but the darkness of its center portion was somehow different from the darkness at the edges. And only a moment after Pinkie and Fluttershy noticed that, the true intent behind the spell was revealed.

Tendrils made of some sort of dark substance extended out from the shadow, dozens of them, which split into additional tendrils multiple times in the blink of an eye, multiplying into hundreds before the Knights could react. Fluttershy was the first to have to deal with them, and while her current form was powerful enough to break the dark tendrils as soon as they reached her, they still got in the way and prevented her from continuing her attack on Tirek.

Pinkie, who was a little further away, managed to prevent the tendrils from approaching her with a combination of hope construct flying punches and her space manipulation increasing the distance they had to travel. But just like Fluttershy's case, that meant she was no longer able to attack the centaur directly.

At that moment, he was occupied in casting the spell, but giving him any leeway at all would be a terrible mistake.

So following the previous two, the next Knight to advance was the third member on this teacher and students trio, the Knight Twilight Sparkle:

"Battlefield Soul: Infinite Variations!" Was her declaration, which also revealed that she had already advanced close to the current battle area. And if one were to pay close attention, they would also notice that none of the other Knights remained in the positions they had been when Tirek drained Sunset.

After Twilight cast her spell, a huge contrast was clearly apparent with the magic cast by her students, as instead of a powerful aura or any other obvious effect engulfing her, there was nothing, or rather, the tremendous power she had focused into the magic seemed to completely fade away, along with any sense of power coming from Twilight herself.

But one with better senses would be able to tell that the power had not actually faded away, but instead merged so completely into the environment that it could no longer be distinguished as something else. And Twilight showed what that magic was capable of as soon as she took a step forward.

Because her step was actually more like an explosion that propelled her forward at extreme speeds, directly into the space right ahead of Tirek, where the tendrils were thickest, and yet she somehow managed to not collide with any of them. And before the tendrils could even try to grab her, Twilight turned her head.

And there was suddenly a lot more space around her, as the great majority of the tendrils in that area got completely destroyed, the rest being torn into hundreds of pieces. It had all happened really fast, but all those remaining in the battlefield had been able to see what happened:

In the air all around Twilight, many blue disks had briefly appeared. All the tendrils that made contact with them were hit by an extreme destructive force that spread much further than where the disks actually touched, causing a scene of absolute devastation in the blink of an eye.

Seeing that, Tirek actually decided to go on the defensive.

"Multiplicity
(Manifest the Inverted Tree of the Abyss!)				
Shadow!"

The tendrils emerging from Tirek's shadow, which were already very numerous, suddenly multiplied themselves by an entire factor. Their number was so great one would be tempted to call them countless, but that would be a flagrant lie, given that Twilight was still aware of the exact number (Pinkie would have been able to count the tendrils as well, but many of them blocked others from sight).

Twilight was aware of that because she was completely aware of every single factor in the battlefield. That was how her current magic worked.

Battlefield Soul: Infinite Variations was essentially Magical Time: Battlefield, but taken to the absolute limit Twilight would ever dare to go. It allowed the instant creation of new magic based on the magic used on the battlefield and the current battle situation. Given that Pinkie and Fluttershy had been at a standstill with Tirek, the magic took after all three of them equally.

From Fluttershy came the explosive power and crushing presence, from Pinkie came the space manipulation to make them appear from nothing, and the blue aura to interact with the environment, and from Tirek came their physical presence and
number.

And so, when the tendrils multiplied and a large number of them came towards Twilight, her magic changed alongside the change in the battlefield. This time the blue disks had become bigger, but the greatest change was the fact that their number had also multiplied, causing the area around the knight to briefly resemble the night sky full of stars, and easily erasing the attack, allowing her two students to advance closer.

However, one shouldn't mistake that for Twilight having the advantage over Tirek. While the attack had indeed been fierce, it was ultimately only a way to delay the Knight, as the vast majority of the tendrils actually circled around and wrapped around Tirek, creating what looked like a boulder made of dark tendrils, one that was as big as a house.

And it was still growing.

Giving the centaur free rein to do what he wanted was a bad idea, so Twilight immediately advanced closer, once more using her strange explosive step. That was also part of the magic reflected from the battlefield. It was movement magic, and since only Pinkie and Fluttershy were moving in the battlefield, the spell took on only traits from their magic.

And a combination of Pinkie's space manipulation and Fluttershy's explosive power resulted in magic that forcefully compressed space by sheer power, resulting in the movements Twilight had performed.

Still, even with all this power, one shouldn't overestimate the magic Twilight was using. There was a reason why she hadn't used it until this point of the fight, multiple reasons in fact.

First of all, while instantly making new magic seemed impressive, the results were very makeshift. A perfected version of the annihilation disks would allow for them to remain continually manifested, be controlled individually and reach great distances away from the user. Twilight's version, on the other hand, could only briefly manifest them in fixed points and only in the area around her.

Meanwhile, the space compression step she used actually required some cooldown time in between steps, something that would not be true of a full version of the spell concept. It was only Twilight's experience as a Knight and adaptability as a chaos mage that allowed her to effectively use such flawed magic.

An even bigger problem was that, like the magic her students were currently using, it too put a great burden onto her. Having to channel a mix of very distinct magical powers that could change explosively at a moment's notice was physically wearing her down at a rate close to what Fluttershy was doing.

And if that wasn't enough, channeling those powers and having them change to respond to the situation in the battlefield was only possible due to the extreme awareness of the environment the spell granted her with, but it was an extremely large amount of information, much of it redundant, and she couldn't ignore any of it or the magic would fail. Keeping track of that kind of information overload was a huge burden on her mind, similarly to what Pinkie Pie was experiencing.

It was something she needed to use, however. That was how far the battle situation had pushed the Knights. And even if (or when) she could no longer take it and was taken out of the fight, as long as she did enough to allow the others to reach victory against Tirek, then the mission would be a success. Pinkie and Fluttershy were, of course, in complete agreement with that line of thought.

The three Knights attacked the black mass, but even with their efforts combined, and Twilight being able to use her spell directly, they were only managing to slow down the growth of the mass, which had started expanding upwards and taking on a vaguely cylindrical shape.

At that point, Tirek's magic outweighed that of Pinkie and Fluttershy to a sufficient extent to trigger another transformation on Twilight's magic. The disks changed, becoming more physical and losing their overwhelming destructive power, plus Twilight could only summon them very close to her body. In exchange, they were now permanent, could be moved through the air, and she could make more of them. Many, many more.

She started summoning a veritable swarm of them, slowed down by the fact she had to keep sending them out to make room for more, and considering how the first ones to reach and attack the black mass were doing, Twilight would only need to call a sufficient number of them to completely counter Tirek's magic.

She would need time to do that, though, and it was then that the passive growth period of Tirek's magic ended. The top part of the "cylinder" erupted like a volcano, raining down heavy, sharp and resilient pieces of hyper-compressed shadow matter down on the surroundings.

That was not an attack the Knights could take lightly. They switched gears into defense almost instantly (It would be instant, but their current extreme states had slowed down their reactions a bit), Twilight started making a protective dome with her disks, which had also changed into more resilient forms due to Tirek's attack. Pinkie used space magic to help pull the disks into position faster (they moved quite slowly). And Fluttershy holding up the dome and channeling her magic through in order to make it stronger.

When the dome started being hit, the trio struggled a bit, but with their current power, such an unfocused attack wouldn't truly push them, so they endured the bombardment without issue. Yet they did not rejoice, since they knew what Tirek was like, so they judged that an attack like that had to have another meaning to it.

They were right. As soon as the attack ended, the many pieces of shadow matter that had fallen to the ground burst open simultaneously, decompressing and spreading. Some of them did hit the knight trio, but they didn't cause any damage, since they weren't actually meant for that.

Instead, the expanding shadow matter connected together and linked with the main part, which ended up making a somewhat spherical structure that seemed to have branched out from the central pillar, while in fact the exact opposite was the case. Twilight, Pinkie and Fluttershy were all trapped in the middle of said structure.

Of course, that was the moment Rainbow Dash descended.

"Grand Hit: Meteor Fall." Was the declaration she made right before, when she was high up in the sky, too far for anyone to hear her.

And she did not betray the name of that skill, for her hit was truly like a meteor in more than one way. Dash had gone up in order to gather a large amount of water around herself and solidify it into super hard ice, and afterwards she had accelerated downwards at such an extreme rate, she actually managed to hit multiple times the speed of sound in the comparatively short distance to the ground.

It was an attack she would never use near anywhere populated.

Her meteor was only around a fifth of the size of Tirek's shadow matter construct, but the impact hit with such tremendous force that the entire thing shook, the expanding of its bottom area stopping completely for the moment, and cracks formed all the way up and down across the gigantic thing.

Incidentally, Tirek's previous attack had also hit the spot where Sunset had fallen, but remember when I said "none of the other Knights remained in the positions they had been when Tirek drained Sunset"? That also meant the unconscious Knights, as Rainbow Dash had flown in to retrieve her teacher while Tirek had been briefly distracted by Pinkie and Fluttershy's initial attacks. And Applejack's position meant it had been easy for Rarity to reach her without issue.

Both of them had been force-transported to the fallback position. In truth, the centaur was already aware of it. He wouldn't have used that previous attack if there was a risk of damaging such a high-quality battery. Of course, the Knights themselves would also have their actions hindered if they had to worry about unconscious comrades, and because Tirek knew so much esoteric magic and techniques, he would be able to work around it better than them, so it wasn't even an equal disadvantage.

Therefore, rescuing the duo had been a priority. But after Dash did her part, she judged that her best next move would be to prepare a powerful enough attack to handle Tirek's current continuously growing spell.

Returning to the battle itself, Rainbow Dash's attack had certainly done a number on the enemy, but the recoil was obviously equally tremendous. The pegasus was still flying, but only barely managing to maintain altitute while her legs hung limply below her, and her expression was extremely tense.

Tirek's shadow recovered first, and the top part of it spread outwards in all directions, the shadow turning  into extremely thick tendrils, many of which stretched towards the flying Knight. It was at that moment that the true form of Tirek's spell became clear: It was an upside-down tree, the dense canopy of "branches" and "leaves" at the bottom, with the thick "roots" at the top.

Rainbow Dash had no way to defend at that moment, but there was still another Knight, one that had been strangely quiet during the latest phase of the battle.

"Artifact Ritual: Triangle of Power." Rarity declared, showing that she was quite close to the edge of the "canopy".

She held her Fire Ruler Sword above her head as lines of light quickly traced themselves on the ground, forming the shape of a triangle with Rarity at its center. At each edge of the triangle lay one of her other Ruler Swords, acting as conduits for the ritual which was intended to power the last of their number. And the line directly connecting the wind and water swords passed directly beneath Rainbow Dash, just as planned.

Trixie was not the only one of the Knights who could use rituals. Rarity had decided to prepare for a big attack while the others were fighting, same as Rainbow Dash, taking advantage of the time they were giving her to complete all the requirements for a true ritual (different from the quick ones Trixie could make with her Realm).

The pegasus was energized thanks to the connection those elements had with weather magic, combined with how Rarity had made the ritual in a way that specifically allowed her to syphon some of the energy from it. Dash took only enough to be able to dodge away from the shadow roots with quick bursts of speed.

The rest of the energy had another use. Rarity channeled it into the Fire Ruler Sword and the spell she was about to perform. And she was going all out, for besides the ritual, she also activated her Burst Drive artifact again to power up the magic even further. The Fire Ruler Sword generated a blade of flame from itself, and said blade grew astonishingly quickly, to the point it was comparable in dimensions to Tirek's own shadow matter construct.

Then she swung.

"Dual Burst Edge: Slash Burning the Horizon!" And the magic was declared.

The colossal blade moved far faster than anything of its dimensions had any right to, cutting towards the "tree" in a horizontal slash. The attack hit, but differently from Dash's move, Tirek had time to react to Rarity's spell, so he managed to focus the strength of his shadow matter construct into the spot the flame blade was about to reach. The flame blade cut slightly into the tree, but could go no further.

Yet, Rarity's attack would not be blocked so easily. She still had a lot more power in reserve, but there was an even more important reason: She had to adhere to her path, both as a knight and as a magic user.

"Perfect Refinement!" The artificer Knight declared.

And then she started altering the magic mid-attack. She refined and perfected the design of the blade, compressing its power further towards the point of contact, sharpening the blade, increasing the power of the flames, and overall adapting the spell to specifically increase its effectiveness against the current target.

The blade cut further into the tree, but the deeper layers were even denser, with even more magic power enhancing them. Her progress was visibly slowing down, and for a moment it was hard to say what would be the final result of that clash.

Then a flame erupted from within the shadow canopy, at the exact opposite side to where Rarity was.

The trio of Knights had forced their way there from their previous position that was closer to Rarity's side. The cooperation of the entire team was at a very high level, so they understood what would be the best way to assist. And Twilight's power had, of course, changed once more.

That was what caused the eruption of flame. The fire quickly grew and took a form similar to what Rarity had made, only the core of it was very physical and very dense matter created from the influence of Tirek's power, but it was quite hard to control (it was a makeshift spell after all), so the edges wavered and changed continuously, until Twilight managed to partially stabilize it with the help of Fluttershy and Pinkie. And it was not by preventing the edge from shifting, but by making its shifts more regular, moving in the same direction and retaining similar shapes.

Instead of a fire blade, it now looked more like a fire chainsaw.

It swung at the tree from the other side, and while it wasn't nearly as strong as Rarity's absurd ritual-powered, artifact-enhanced attack, it was still plenty strong, and Tirek's shadow construct, attacked from both sides, finally broke and was slashed in half, crumbling down into many pieces which were rapidly fading away.

But before it could fade completely away, Tirek made his move. He had been entrenched at the center of the shadow structure, but his position suddenly changed to one of the pieces near the edge, specifically one very close to Rarity. Twilight  realized that immediately, since her current state of awareness meant she had been fully aware of his position the entire time, but he burst out of the shadow a moment later, leaving no time for any warnings.

The artificer Knight had truly put everything she had into that spell, and there hadn't been enough time for her to regain her energy, so she was unable to react as Tirek grabbed her.

And then there was a breaking sound and causality seemed to warp, leaving Tirek grabbing at nothing while Rarity stood a quarter of the battlefield away from him.

That was the effect of Rarity's fourth and final horseshoe artifact: The Scapegoat Idol.

One could call it a masterpiece. While Rarity was wearing it, if she was about to be rendered unconscious or to be drained, it would automatically activate and modify her position via some unknown method (she had made it based on old notes left by a knight who had a similar skill, so even she didn't quite understand how it worked) in order to render her safe.

But for such a powerful effect, it was inevitable that it would have a huge drawback. Said drawback was that it required a sacrifice of one of Rarity's artifact horseshoes in order to activate. And she could not control what it would be. That was the cause of the breaking sound, and it turned out that the artifact that broke was Rarity's Burst Drive. The Scapegoat Idol was essentially capable of giving the Knight four extra "chances", since it would only target itself when there weren't any other horseshoe artifacts left.

Which of course, also meant that everytime Rarity was saved, she would lose part of her combat effectiveness. Now she was unable to quickly power up her spells to more easily create threats to their current foe. An advantage lost, but still far preferable to having Rarity be drained and taken out of the fight entirely.

Specially since she had managed to break Tirek's spell in exchange, which was something they definitely needed to do, as otherwise it would keep growing more and more powerful, and while it definitely had a limit, said limit would certainly be beyond what the five Knights on the field would be able to face, even together.

However, while his spell was broken, it had been the more stable slow-growing type of big magic, so that didn't mean Tirek himself would suffer any particularly great "recoil" from that. He even used the fading spell itself to his advantage, which was further proof of that.

This brief pause in the action was a good moment to review the positions and conditions of the combatants currently on that battlefield.

Tirek was currently at the position Rarity had been when she used her attack. He had spent quite a lot of energy on that spell but still had plenty to spare, more than enough to defend against any rushed attacks the knights might try to do. He had gotten some injuries from the initial rush of attacks by Fluttershy and Pinkie, but they were minor.

Rarity had been moved away from Tirek but also even further away from the trio of Knights. Her energy levels were already getting close to normal, but she hadn't had the time to recover the three Ruler Swords used as part of the ritual, so it would still take a bit more time for her to be able to rejoin the fight in earnest.

Rainbow Dash was flying a good distance above the battlefield, her position being almost but not quite in between Rarity and Tirek. Her energy was plentiful, but she had injured herself with the previous attack and hadn't been able to receive any healing since then, so anything she tried to do would be hindered somewhat.

Twilight, Fluttershy and Pinkie were still at the spot where the unicorn had done her part to aid in Rarity's strike, essentially half of the battlefield away from Tirek. Fluttershy's body was beginning to hurt, but she was still far from her limits and full of energy. Twilight was spent from her previous magic and would need a few more seconds to recover, but she was still enduring the side-effects of her magic relatively well.

Pinkie, on the other hand, was just as full of energy as Fluttershy, but her head had already started to hurt from the mental strain of her magic, and she knew it would only get worse from there.

Knowing that, she decided on her next course of action.

"Dual Essence. Anger and Joy!" She declared, switching up the magic.

The two auras on her body did not vanish, instead they were outright shatered as two new auras emerged, those two were red and pink, and they clashed against each other intensely.

And Pinkie did not wait even a single moment before putting her new power to use. She seemed to split into several copies, which only lasted for a moment before being shattered into pieces, and those pieces reformed into more Pinkie Pies before shattering and continuing the cycle.

The Knight did not move towards Tirek as much as she multiplied herself in his direction. But her copies did not continue multiplying after reaching a few dozen, after which they were simply duplicating themselves on each cycle.

Strange as it was, this form of movement was exceedingly fast, to the point they reached Tirek before he could take another action. The many Pinkie Pies attacked him in a barrage, even as they kept breaking apart and reforming.

The centaur was forced to deploy a barrier in order to hold off the attacks, and seeing that he was busy, Rarity started to teleport around to collect her swords, but she needed to spend a good amount of extra time on the teleports to be able to deal with the extreme amounts of magical interference that had blanketed the battlefield due to so much powerful magic being cast over such a short period of time.

Fluttershy started flying towards Tirek in order to give support, and Twilight had to take a moment in order to adapt to how the newest shift in the battlefield situation had affected her magic.

However, Pinkie had still underestimated how much the mental strain would hinder her. The Knight had commited a single mistake while performing her attack, a mistake she would never have made under normal circumstances. Pinkie had forgotten to use her magic to anchor herself in place and prevent outside interference from moving her.

And in a battle of such a level, a single mistake was all it took.

"Battlefield
(Positional Warp Type 14)				
Shift!"

Tirek declared his magic with a stomp on the ground, and then both the centaur as well as the battalion of pony copies were somewhere else, along with a good portion of the ground they were standing on. Tirek's shift had taken them beyond the former edges of the battlefield, as far away from the other Knights as he could manage with such a comparatively minor spell.

It was far enough to prevent interference for almost ten whole seconds.

Pinkie didn't get confused by the sudden change, so she immediately realized the immense gravity of the situation and decided on the best course of action she could possibly take under the circumstances: All-out attack.

There was no leeway to watch for traps, no leeway to preserve energy for a follow-up, no leeway to try being clever. And she could feel that there was no way she'd manage to squeeze out of the trap, or even delay the opponent for long enough to get support. So she put everything into offense.

The Pinkie copies began flickering rapidly, their shapes briefly distorting as they channeled too much energy for their current state to contain, and then they leapt into Tirek and exploded. Hundreds of copies were made and destroyed in a mere five seconds, blasting Tirek with the equivalent of dozens of Knight-grade destructive spells.

Then Pinkie ran out of energy, falling to the ground in her normal form, the spell having faded. Her desperate attack had left the entire left side of Tirek's body scorched and bleeding, one of the fingers in his hand now missing. But he still stood, and reached his hand to touch Pinkie's head.

"Magic Drain."

Another Knight was down.

But if there was any consolation to be had in the current situation, it would be that Tirek was unable to repeat the spell he had done upon draining Applejack. Even with all the power he had, that was not a spell he was currently able to use without some sort of special method, and the one he choose was to put a restriction on the spell, making it so he could only use it once per day.

His mimic ability was the same way, so that one wouldn't be repeated either. What he could do depended on the amount of power he had managed to gather at the time, and sometimes he would use other special methods to use magic beyond his "limit", but the restriction method was his most common.

That was something the Knights knew about, having been figured out over the many encounters Knights of the past had with Tirek. There was no way to tell whether a spell had such a restriction just by looking, but they understood that if Tirek were currently powerful enough to freely use magic on the level of Eternity Exceeded, then they wouldn't have been able to survive against him for so long.

Tirek had barely finished draining Pinkie before he was forced to defend himself again, as Twilight arrived, her magic having shifted once more, taking in Tirek's shift magic added to Fluttershy's and creating a movement spell that forcefully accelerated the ground via non-standard shifting, allowing Twilight to ride it for a speed boost.

And the shifting accumulated more and more ground even as it got faster and faster, turning into a wave of earth that Fluttershy was able to grab onto and be carried along midway through her flight. and just before they arrived, Fluttershy extended her sanctuary magic just enough to reach the fallen Pinkie before letting go of the wave.

Because at the same moment, Twilight turned the wave from a vehicle to a projectile, ramming tons of high-speed mass into Tirek like a train crash.

That was still a makeshift magic, so the Knight was unable to properly prevent all of the "splash" from hitting the fallen pony who was right next to her target. That was why Fluttershy's use of sanctuary was needed.

The centaur only had time to do a basic magic barrier in order to protect himself, but his new burst of power meant he could dump a lot of power into it without worrying about follow-ups specially considering the other two active Knights were still quite far away.

Speaking of them, by that point Rarity had managed to recover her swords and was currently in the process of healing Rainbow Dash. The two would be ready to rejoin the immediate fight soon.

Going back to Tirek, all that extra power was still not enough to completely block Twilight's attack, so he manipulated the barrier to go under himself and disabled its anchoring properties, thus resulting in the mass of earth pushing him away from his original position, softening the effect of the blow.

He did not come out unscathed, but it was much better than if he had tried to stop it in place.

Twilight wanted to pursue him, but her shifting earth took time to accelerate into notable speeds, so she was unable to quickly cross even that comparatively minor distance. Tirek would have been able to prepare a counter-attack by the time she got close enough, but something else happened during that period of time.

Tirek's right hand reappeared. And almost immediately after, the sound of hooves was heard.

+0+

A small part of Trixie, if pressed, would admit to feeling frustration at the current situation. Most of her, however, was completely focused on trying to find some way of actually getting rid of the Tirek parasite infesting her Realm.

She had already tried so many things and none of them had worked. She tried to destroy it using every method she could think of, from pure firepower all the way to straight up death magic, but nothing did the trick. She tried forcefully changing the parasite's nature in order to render it a non-threat, but it had just enough of a sense of will to resist changes to its fundamental being, and Trixie was not powerful enough to overcome its resitance by force.  Not even cancelling her spell would work, as the parasite seemed able to force the spell to remain active via its connection to her.

And of course, it wasn't like Trixie could just attack freely. The enemy's own offensive ability wasn't enough to really threaten her, but it was more than enough to hinder her efforts at getting rid of it. The magic the parasite could use was pretty varied, since it was partially hijacking her own Realm, and it was smart enough to make good use of such versatility.

It was indeed a truly troublesome foe, which had been keeping Trixie away from the main fight for much longer than she could accept. Having even one fewer Knight present in the fight against Tirek would make it much harder for them to match him, which was exactly why the centaur had done what he did, even at the cost of a hand.

And Trixie had no idea how the fight was going. She had sealed off the Realm from outside stimuli in order to make it truly impossible for the parasite to cooperate with Tirek. And while usually the Knights could use Fluttershy's magic to maintain accurate communications even at such a distance, Tirek had been known to target connections between knights with esoteric forms of magic that could cause harsh negative effects to all who were bound by them.

As such, Fluttershy had limited her empathy magic to the point that only knights who were relatively close by would be able to use it, thus making it a lot harder for Tirek to exploit those connections.

Being in that situation, and unable to break through using any ordinary methods, the illusionist knight eventually hit upon a very unusual idea.

"This place isn't big enough for the two of us." She said in a tone of challenge.

And then Trixie shrunk her Realm to its minimum possible size, exactly the same as her own body. As the parasite's very existence was constrained to the area of effect of her magic, that meant the knight and the magic construct were briefly forced to occupy the exact same space.

Such was obviously a physical impossibility, so reality did the equivalent of blinking in confusion, and if there were any observers who were close enough to the action, they would have witnessed the singularly bizarre sight of Trixie's form flickering betweeen her natural self and Tirek's body compressed into the same size.

That state lasted only for a few short moments before reality reasserted itself. Only one being could exist in that one place, and so the weaker of the two was essentially erased from existence.

Of course, a mere magical parasite, no matter how powerful, would never win a struggle of that sort if its opponent was a Knight.

And as soon as Trixie managed to get rid of the annoying parasite, she realized that something was different: Her senses seemed to have been enhanced, as she was able to clearly see the battle in the distance (realizing that three Knights had already fallen) and hear the minute sounds of the wind flowing around the area. Similarly, she felt like her body itself had grown much stronger, to the point she was worried about accidentally cratering the ground if she tried to take a step.

She realized what the answer was very quickly: It was an unintended (but beneficial) side-effect of shrinking her Realm in that manner and for that purpose. Doing so had focused all of its power into her body, but that was only part of the reason for that change. The other parts were the struggle she had against the parasite and the nature of her Realm as a manifestation of dreams, and thus Ideas.

In that struggle, she had needed to reinforce her very existence in order to pit it against that of the opponent, and so all of the power of her Realm, condensed down to its minimum size, had taken that figurative idea of making her own being stronger and made it literal by enhancing her body itself.

It was ironic that she had spent so much effort in thinking of ways to use her unique magic against Tirek, but now an even better method had essentially been handed to her on a silver platter.

Thus Trixie manifested a magical sword and shield, both floating close to her, and despite being outside the area of the Realm (meaning they weren't inside Trixie), those two were far stronger than she'd be able to make normally, as the manifestation spell used the caster's body as part of the magical template (which was the reason why she chose to use it).

"Knight of Dreams." She declared, naming that very special application of her magic.

Then she rushed towards the battlefield.

+0+

From when the sound of hooves was heard by Tirek and the knights facing him, barely any time passed before Trixie entered the fight. She was moving fast enough that even Rainbow Dash would be hard-pressed to go any faster without flying.

The centaur quickly realized that the newcomer was currently the biggest threat on the battlefield, so he decided to preempt her.

"Burning
(Path of Doom)				
Ground!"

He extended his hands in Trixie's direction and once more unleashed a calamitous amount of magic, which spread slightly outwards before advancing forward in a wave that dominated the entire area it covered, turning both the ground and the air into focuses and catalysts for a multitude of offensive spells, all of them fire based, but each and every one of them also had additional effects like mini-curses and the release of noxious gases.

But none of that mattered, because when the "corridor" was about to reach Trixie's position, she simply slashed with her sword.

She was still a specialist in illusions, so she immediately spotted the hidden tricks within Tirek's magic and decided that the best course of action would be to deal with all of them at once. Her slash released a wave of cutting magical power that smashed into a good portion of the spells in the corridor, triggering them in a way that started a chain reaction that resulted in all the other spells triggering prematurely as well.

Then, without even slowing down her advance, Trixie followed up by swiping her shield sideways, shattering active effects like curses while dispersing passive elements like poison. She did not completely erase all of Tirek's magic, but it was more than enough to go through safely.

She finally reached him and atacked, but Tirek managed to block her first slash, because although he had spent a good amount of power on that spell, Trixie's counter to it had also cost her quite a bit.

Trixie's reentry into the fight had at least managed to bring things back into balance when it looked like everything was starting to fall apart. The Knights were still in the battle.

Trixie and Tirek exchanged a few blows, neither of them giving ground as they tried to save up energy for the next move as well as preventing the other from doing the same, before they both backed away at the same time, almost as if they had rehearsed it beforehand.

However, their parity ended there, since Tirek cast his spell first:

"Destruction
(Entropic Blast Orb)				
Sphere!"

He extended his right hand, pointing his palm at Trixie, and right in front of it manifested a dark purple, partially transparent sphere of magic, and inside it one could see an incandescent red core from which strands of magical lightning continuously sparked outwards and hit the insides of the sphere.

He then shot off the sphere at a relatively fast speed, but not fast enough Trixie wouldn't be able to dodge it. And from that one could infer that the attack had some sort of trick to it. The Knight noticed that, but she wasn't planning on dodging in the first place.

"Dream Sword: Subtle Slash!" Trixie declared, having managed to finish her own spell just in time.

Her sword glowed golden as she slashed right through the sphere.

"Gaaah!" And Tirek cried out in pain, a large gash appearing on his chest.

The true target of Trixie's attack had been him all along. The slash had created the illusion of hitting the sphere, while the actual attack had avoided it and extended invisibly towards the centaur.

But there was a price to pay.

An explosion rocked Trixie's position, as the sphere hit the shield she had raised at the last moment and broke apart, unleashing a tremendous amount of destrutive power that covered enough area the Knight wouldn't have been able to completely dodge.

After the explosion, Trixie still stood, but her legs were unsteady, she was breathing hard and blood was dripping from the corner of her mouth.

Most of the energy she had saved during the brief exchange with Tirek was put into her attack, meaning very little was left for her own defenses. Even in her current form, Trixie had barely managed to remain standing afterwards.

The Knight had decided that landing a major blow against Tirek was worth such a price. The time for half measures had long since passed, and if she needed to trade blood for blood in order to increase their chances of victory, then that was what she would do.

The enemy recovered first, but before he had the chance to attack Trixie again, Rainbow Dash showed up to give him something else to worry about.

"Tornado Wings!" She shouted and started flapping her wings repeatedly, blasting Tirek with mini tornadoes.

He put his right hand up to form a barrier while using his left hand to try and close up the injury to his chest, but he only managed about half of it before being interrupted by the appearance of another Knight.

"Ruler of Wind: Hurricane Manifestation!" Rarity cast.

Her magic merged seamlessly with Rainbow's spell, causing the tornadoes to keep spinning around even after hitting Tirek, and then they quickly merged together into a large hurricane that forced the centaur into focusing fully on defense.

Tirek wasn't the type to simply defend passively, though. After a few moments of that he roared, causing his chest injury to glow red and visibly widen. And then he brought his hands together in a crushing motion, breaking the hurricane and causing both knights to grunt from the recoil.

He immediately turned around and punched out at Twilight, whose power had changed again and was now enveloped in a drill of cutting wind that Tirek met with a punch enveloped in black destructive energy. The two were briefly evenly matched in their clash, but that was when another weakness of Twilight's current technique revealed itself.

"Ghh!" She grunted in pain, her power flagging just enough for Tirek to break her spell and smash her into the ground with his punch.

Twilight's Battlefield Soul had automatically taken in some of the characteristics of Tirek's current self-harming power up, and because her body was already under so much strain from her magic and the battle as a whole, that just pushed things over the edge.

Fluttershy, who had been just behind Twilight, dove down to rescue her, but Tirek hadn't actually used a spell in that exchange. Because his actual target had been the pegasus all along.

"Ultimate
(Sixth Degree Annihilation)				
Buster!"

He extended his hands towards her, side by side and with fingers outstretched, somewhat reminiscent of a spider's legs, and when Fluttershy got close, he unleashed his attack.

A colossal amount of power turned into an invisible shockwave that seemed to just disappear into Fluttershy's body for a moment. The next instant her body was ravaged by what felt like a thousand explosive spells from the inside, as Tirek's technique did not waste a single drop of its power, all of it damaging Fluttershy.

Not even her extreme endurance could resist such a devastating attack, and the pegasus crashed into the ground, unable to move. But she had fallen a bit farther away from him than Twilight, who was literally right at his feet.

Tirek's first target was therefore obvious.

"Magic Drain." He declared, reaching towards the unicorn with a hand.

However, he hadn't accounted for the possibility of Twilight still being conscious. Her spell was also still active, which Tirek would have noticed had he not been pushed so far by all the fighting up to that point. As such, when his hands reached close to the Knight, the spell suppressing properties of Magic Drain caused her magic to finally break.

And that chaotic technique that involved Twilight absorbing so many different types of magic and mixing them together into unstable configurations had accumulated a large amount of magical 'waste', which was simply traces of power born as a side-effect of the magical mixing, and they were only being kept contained by Twilight's control of the spell.

So Tirek breaking the magic was the equivalent of triggering a bomb. It was not a spell, so it wasn't cancelled by his magic, it was simply a release of energy. The safeguards in Twilight's spell directed the energy upwards to protect her body.

Which resulted in Tirek taking an eruption of unstable magical power directly to the face.

He started to recoil away, but forcefully stopped himself and completed his drain, grimly enduring for the second or so that the eruption lasted, unwilling to back away from his prey.

When it was over, his face looked like a mess, the entire left side covered in horrible burns that had clearly blinded that eye.

And then Trixie attacked.

"Severing Dream Slash!" She declared in a shout, clearly having managed to recover a decent amount.

She had appeared close enough to the fallen Knights she would almost be able to touch them, and her approach had taken perfect advantage of the distraction caused by the eruption, so she was in the perfect position to start her attack.

Trixie swung her sword, which seemed to cut through existence itself, leaving a shining semicircle of dreamlike power that flew at the centaur, the materialization of Trixie's slash.

Tirek reacted fast, using a whole lot of energy to materialize a barrier in front of himself (he currently had a lot of power to spare), which would have been able to block... If that had been a conventional attack.

Instead, the slash simply vanished as it touched the barrier. And Rarity attacked from behind with a slash that nearly split him in half, her Wind Ruler Sword glowing with the same light as Trixie's spell.

She wasn't close enough to hit him directly, but the dreamlike attack simply acted as if Rarity had been the one to shoot it in the first place, so it showed up behind the centaur at the same moment it had disappeared in the front. Rarity had received a very subtle spell message from the other knight informing her of the plan, and the cooperation of the duo was enough to pull it off.

Once again, that wasn't the sort of thing that would have worked earlier in the fight, but Tirek had been worn down to such an extent he was just barely unable to notice the secret hidden in Trixie's technique.

A large amount of blood flowed out of the massive open injury he had been inflicted with, and the shock made many of his other injuries, previously suppressed by magical power, to open up again. Tirek also stumbled forward, but managed to stabilize himself.

The illusionist Knight was able to see that, at that moment, his eyes blazed with hatred as he cast a new spell:

"Brutality
(Marionette of Self: Battlefield Type: Forbidden Level 5)				
Armor!"

Two dozen golden magical spikes manifested themselves around his upper body and then pierced into his flesh with great strength, clearly causing Tirek to have to hold back a scream. They didn't go fully inside him, and the parts that were exposed extended threads that connected them together, and the multiple threads started fusing together and taking on a more metalic appearance.

The same process occured on his lower body just a moment later, and then finally the threads moved upwards and made a sort of cage around his head, though his remaining horn wasn't covered by it. In the end, Tirek looked like he was wearing a golden suit of armor made of chain links.

The remaining Knights felt like their opponent had suddenly gotten a lot more dangerous, and they were right. The magic he had just used was a very extreme type of war magic, designed to allow soldiers to fight far beyond their usual limits by literally holding their flesh together regardless of what injuries they had.

That essentially meant Tirek's current injuries would be unable to impair his combat abilities while he was wearing the armor. But even worse was the fact that his version of it also increased his physical capabilities tremendously.

That was shown when Tirek took a step and was suddenly punching Rarity, having turned around and reached her in a single explosive movement.

It was impossible for the knight to react to such a sudden shift in the battle, and so she ended up being saved by the Scapegoat Idol again, being teleported away once more, and this time it was her Speed Step artifact that was sacrificed.

Rainbow Dash dove in and hit Tirek in passing, just to distract him for one moment to allow Rarity to regain her bearings and make her way back to the fight (she hadn't actually been teleported that far away), even that was almost a mistake, as she only barely managed to avoid being grabbed in the process.

Tirek actually wasn't absurdly fast, but the speed increase was still enough to catch the knights off guard due to how sudden it was, completely surpassing their predictions. That wasn't an advantage he could hold for long, since they would get used to his new speed. Even after just those two short exchanges they were already much more able to follow his movements.

Still, he had used that momentary advantage in order to get a more permanent one by way of weakening Rarity, so one could still say his move had been effective.

He followed up by clawing in the general direction of Dash and Rarity, releasing a wave of energy and spatial disturbance shaped like his clawing hand. The wave was as wide as a lake and as tall as two houses stacked on top of each other, so it could threaten the two Knights despite them not being all that close to each other.

And as the two unleashed their own spells to break that attack (Rainbow Dash with a lightning bolt arrow and Rarity with a crushing pillar of water) he once more moved in an explosive fashion, but this time going straight towards Trixie.

"Crescent Slash!" Was her counter.

She had managed to react fast enough to attack with a powerful downwards cut that hit Tirek on his right shoulder, and once more that wasn't just an ordinary direct attack, but this time Trixie's trick failed. His armor left no gaps to attack his most critical areas, and it held his flesh together firmly enough that he only slowed down by a quarter when hit by the attack, despite it still being powerful enough to make a large amount of his blood splash to the ground.

His movements unhindered by her blow, he punched with his left fist wrapped up in what was essentially a spatial quake, a powerful magical vibration that disturbed matter down to the smallest foundation.

Trixie managed to shift herself enough to only take a glancing hit to the side, yet the nature of the attack was such that even this resulted in the equivalent of being hit with a water tank moving at supersonic speeds. It was severely painful, but she emitted no sound because all the air had been driven from her body.

Thankfully, Tirek hadn't put his all into the attack, so even though she was shot away at considerable speed and with at least five broken bones, Trixie managed to land on her feet and without any critical injuries.

Sadly, Tirek hadn't put his all into the attack because his true aim had been the Knight behind Trixie, Fluttershy.

The pegasus had ceased her Trance Mode as it no longer served any purpose, and had just barely managed to stand back up with great effort. Perhaps in another minute or two she would have been able to muster the strength for an attack, but as it was, she was unable to prevent Tirek from draining her.

"Magic Drain!" He shouted aggressively as his right hand reached out to her. Fluttershy muttered two words, but no magic manifested itself.

In just a few moments, Fluttershy had also been drained of her magic. Yet she did not collapse, instead staring at him with eyes full of determination and speaking one more word:

"Link."

A tiny, almost invisible magical circle lit up below the pegasus. And a moment later, against all odds, a response came from within Tirek.

The two words Fluttershy had muttered before had been 'Empathy Heart', and they weren't actually a spell. They were essentially a mental focus similar to the one used to trigger overdrive, but with the sole function of holding her magic in a certain shape.

It would remain as such even after the magic was absorbed by Tirek, as the shape would not collapse as long as her will and focus remained. That was only possible because magic kept a connection to the original user even after being drained, and because she was close enough. The specific shape was not important, since it only served as a small way to strengthen the connection it still had with Fluttershy, just a little bit.

Then, after the Magic Drain was over, meaning the suppressive effect it had on the activation of any magic was gone, Fluttershy triggered the magic circle she had secretly drawn after being heavily injured, knowing that Tirek would try to come and drain her soon.

She was unable to use magic on her own because of the draining, so an external measure was necessary. The circle was too simple and haphazard to channel more than a tiny amount of ambient magic, all to power an equally tiny spell that had no physical effects.

Yet, all of that was the last resort that Fluttershy had mentioned during the planning against Tirek. That magic could be called the magnum opus of the Knight who specialized in empathy and bonds. The connecting link she had forged to Tirek was far too fragile to serve as a conduit for any sort of attack, but it was solid enough to transmit emotions and feelings.

And so the magic of 'Empathy Heart - Link' gifted the centaur with a copy of Fluttershy's own sense of empathy.

That was a completely unprecedented attack. Tirek would have been able to block an attempt at manipulating his emotions directly, but that magic instead simply forced the centaur to look at himself and what he had done via the eyes of someone who actually cared about others.

The sudden wave of feelings that blossomed in his heart was more akin to a tsunami. Tirek opened his mouth and roared, a sound that was filled with indescribable grief and absolute regret.

The Knight still stood, looking at him, unable to guess what his final reaction would be. And then Tirek, still in the throes of anguish, brought his left hand to his heart and it glowed with a black, murky light.

"
(NO)				
"

Tirek's newfound sense of empathy was shattered beyond repair. He ceased to emit any sound and slowly brought his hand back down.

Fluttershy, who had already gone well past her limits, finally collapsed after feeling her spell break, her last thoughts before unconsciousness being that she pitied her opponent for rejecting his chance at walking a different path.

Tirek turned back towards the three remaining Knights, who had joined close together. And all four who were still standing on the battlefield understood that the end of the fight was close.