Starlight Glimmer had obviously been aware of their approach, so the Knights barely had enough time to register the enemy's presence before coming under attack, as a shift in her magic caused the prism beside her to glow briefly, and then the water pressure around them quickly increased to deadly levels.
Yet it wasn't quick enough for Spike and the Crusaders, who used their own respective forms of water control magic to cancel out the pressure increase, cooperating flawlessly. Starlight Glimmer knew that, of course, but that initial attack had only ever been meant as a quick distraction, which was followed by the walls of the underwater cave erupting into an explosion of rock shards, each of them capable of going through steel.
Sweetie Belle took charge of the Crusaders' bond magic, unleashing their power to force the water around them into a series of raging currents that managed to shift the trajectories of the rock shards enough to turn them into easily endurable glancing hits. While Spike, knowing that remaining on the defensive was pointless, responded by clicking his "booster claws" to launch himself forward, briefly hitting supersonic speeds before being slowed down by the water pressure and thus avoiding the area of effect of Starlight's attack.
That one move crossing half of the distance to their opponent, Spike followed up with a spin that created a twister jet of water that spun fast enough to to cause the water it touched to briefly boil from the sheer friction. Starlight couldn't ignore that sort of offensive, so she cast a spell that channeled the power of the magical prism beside her to send such a tremendous wave of cold that it flash froze a significant amount of water between the two and crushed Spike's twister jet out of existence.
All of that ice also blocked Spike's vision of the unicorn, so he channeled his magic again and unleashed a powerful sound wave that shattered the ice into pieces, revealing that her next attack was already in progress: Two huge tendrils of rock continuously grew from the walls behind her reaching towards the dragon.
But Spike wasn't the only Knight at the scene. The Crusaders advanced, Scootaloo taking the lead in their bond and manifesting dozens of underwater bubbles that immediately exploded, releasing shockwaves that fused together into a single, destructive wave that broke the tendrils of rock into pieces, which their dragon comrade followed up by gathering them all into a ball and throwing it with the force of a torpedo, straight at Starlight's prism.
The unicorn countered that by unleashing a massive pulse of energy from it and channeling it into a terrifyingly cold spell that froze the water in between her and the Knights in an instant, entombing Spike's attack into an ice coffin while also forming a new barrier to their offensive.
That sort of thing wouldn't do. The battle was being kept at a standstill, and it was clear that was Starlight's intention in order to allow herself time to finish whatever ritual she was trying to do. The Knights had to step it up a notch.
'Bond Invocation' Applebloom chanted inwardly, and an image appeared on her left eye.
The image of Sunset Shimmer's cutie mark.
Bond Invocation was a new technique developed by the Crusaders. A way to use the power of a third cutie mark without going into Triple Bond state, which was still too exhausting for them to do easily. It essentially meant pulling out just enough power from a cutie mark's bond to unleash a single spell with it, without accessing it fully.
The magic of Applebloom's spell was channeled through the trio's spell construct, lighting it up with a deep orange shine born from sun magic. Then they rushed forward, breaking through the ice barrier without slowing down and trying to tackle Starlight Glimmer.
The unicorn immediately understood the danger of that attack so she unleashed energy from the prism once more, this time directing the magic into the cavern's walls and ceiling, controlling the earth to shape itself into a barrier that completely hid Starlight's side of the room from view. The Crusaders didn't care. They rammed straight into the powerful barrier of earth, and while it could hold them back for a whole second, it was broken through completely afterwards.
Yet the Crusaders were immediately met with another earth barrier that had been made right behind the first. They took a moment to charge up their form even further, resulting in their shine becoming almost blinding, then rammed straight into that second barrier. The greater power of this new attack got through this barrier twice as fast, but yet another barrier already stood in their way.
Beginning to feel frustrated, the Crusaders rammed into the third barrier and were joined on their attack by Spike, who had grown his hands to huge proportions and began to claw into the wall alongside their attack. The third barrier broke even faster, and the Knights were just barely able to see the inevitable fourth barrier being finished.
They were gaining ground, and that energized them to break through the next barrier and then the fifth after that, at which point they managed to catch a glimpse of Starlight's prism before the wall rose high enough to block their sight. They lost some ground on the sixth barrier, having to re-energize their spells, but the four of them were quickly becoming better at figuring out the barriers' weak points in order to break them quickly.
In one final rush, they broke through the next three barriers faster than ever, gaining enough ground to see Starlight Glimmer still on the same spot as the tenth barrier rose. They brought through said barrier before it was even fully formed, and their enemy seemed to take that as a sign that the utility of such strategy was at an end, creating sharp spikes from the walls that stabbed at the Knights with amazing speed.
That wasn't enough to catch them off guard, as the four managed to counter and break those spikes without being hit. Yet it was at this moment that Starlight's prism seemed to beat like a heart before emitting a gigantic pulse of power and breaking apart into shards that flowed into the villain.
'This place's ritual was completed!' Scootaloo immediately realized and informed the others with a message 'And I just realized that this is a three-part ritual, so there's only one more place left!'
The news was troublesome, but the Knights were already doing what they needed: Rushing at Starlight Glimmer in order to defeat her, so their actions didn't change even after realizing that. However, the unicorn still had one more trick up her sleeve, shooting a spell upwards and breaking the illusion that had been in place throughout the entire battle, revealing that right above her... Was a tunnel straight to open sea.
Starlight then used another spell, manipulating the water to carry her away through the tunnel at great speed. The Knights wouldn't be outran that easily though, so they immediately changed their respective spells to change into the modes that allowed for better speed and began to frantically chase the enemy.
They were slightly faster, but it wasn't enough for them to close the gap before Starlight managed to move all the way to the surface (clearly laughing at the very concept of decompression sickness, not that the Knights had any room to talk) and smoothly flowing her water movement spell into a water and wind flight spell, taking off straight west.
Despite their skill, the Knights were unable to change into their flying abilities as quickly as Starlight had, so she gained some distance from them before they could renew their chase. However, they were once again faster in moving than the unicorn, and this time the disparity was noticeably larger, so they began quickly closing the gap. But it wasn't all good news.
"It's a triangle formation!" Scootaloo realized "She's heading directly to the last vertice of the triangle in order to execute the final ritual!"
And Starlight Glimmer also knew that outrunning them wasn't in the cards, so she began to cast attack spells while moving.
"Destroyer Comet!" She declared, and her magic manifested into a ring of water that seemed to resonate with the ocean itself.
Then it transformed into a large rock mass that threw itself at the Knights. The Crusaders had changed into a combination of Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie's cutie marks, which turned their spell construct into a bird-like streamlined flying form coated in a thin layer of chaotic energy that distorted space to make them move even faster. Sweetie Belle was currently the one who wasn't manifesting a bond, so she took charge of their countermeasures.
"Bond Invocation!" She cast, drawing power from Princess Luna's cutie mark.
A silver aura coated their construct, allowing them to shift their position in a way akin to teleportation, and they quickly shifted away from the danger zone without losing speed. But Starlight's spell wasn't that easy to deal with, and as they passed beside the comet it began to eject torrential water streams at them from within. The Crusaders shifted as best they could, but they were still hit with large amounts of ballistic water and it was all they could do to keep moving forward and pass by the spell.
Meanwhile, Spike was having a better time. His flight form had two huge wings that acted as barriers which combined with Spike's overall resilience allowed him to force his way through the water without getting slowed down too much and he passed beyond the spell's area of effect earlier than his current partners.
Of course, that meant he was the first one to receive Starlight's next attack.
"Steam Eruption!" She declared, once more manifesting that same water ring.
Only this time it was followed by the water beneath beginning to bubble before releasing a massive amount of extremely hot compressed steam straight onto the dragon. It was almost like a volcano had erupted right below the surface, a comparison that became even more accurate when the steam was joined by large amounts of ash and noxious gases. Spike shielded himself with his wings while shifting them into tougher versions similar to those of the tunneling dragons, but although that succeeded in protecting him from injury, it allowed Starlight to gain distance as his speed dropped precipitously.
'She's using the ocean to supplement and aid her techniques.' Spike realized, then he sent a message to the Crusaders telling them to 'Attack from above!' and followed his own advice by unleashing a stream of dragonfire to force himself to rise through the air.
As soon as they got through the comet, the Crusaders did the same by having Sweetie use bond invocation to summon the power of Rarity's cutie mark and take control of the wind to propel them upwards.
The chase continued from there, with the Knights slowly managing to gain ground once more. Starlight continued attacking them, first by unleashing a water blast that rose from the ocean like a fountain, then by launching a barrage of ice spikes. However, the extra distance from the surface of the ocean meant that the attacks lost a lot of power on the way there, and so the Knights were able to get through both of them while hardly losing any speed.
Of course, that meant the Knights were also able to start paying Starlight back for all those spells.
"Scale Shed Burst!" Declared Spike before briefly compressing himself into a ball and then releasing the tension all at once like an explosion, shedding a large amount of extremely hard and sharp pieces of shell that shot towards Starlight in a powerful bombardment.
"Bond Invocation!" Called out Sweetie Belle, drawing power from Sunset's cutie mark to harness the energy of the sun, charging for a few seconds before following up with a cry of "Falling Star!", focusing all the power into a mini-sun and sending it flying towards their enemy at near supersonic speeds.
The coordination of their attacks was flawless, Spike's scales blanketing the area and hindering the enemy's routes of escape right before the Crusaders' powerful spell came through. Even the Knights who had gotten strong enough to receive titles thus far would find it troublesome to deal with.
The same was true of the current Starlight Glimmer, but although it was troublesome, she was far from helpless:
"Manifest Power: Cloak of Tsunami." She declared in a calm tone that was completely at odds with the intense raging power that erupted from her declaration. This time, instead of a single water ring, three of them appeared at the same time, as the Knights briefly felt like the entire ocean had become an enemy, such was the oppressive feeling of the energy that flowed within her magic.
The effect of the spell was just as impressive, as hundreds of millions of tons of water erupted from the ocean and englobed Starlight Glimmer, flowing around her continuously with such intensity it was like she was wearing the world's biggest waterfall. Spike's powerful scales were like the most fragile feathers in front of such power, being grinded to dust in mere moments, and when the star collided with the water, the result was an explosion of steam powerful enough to destroy an entire city block, but the liquid defense sucessfully protected its master.
"What a horrifying spell..." Spike commented.
"How is she even able to use such powerful magic so easily?" Sweetie wondered.
"That's not..." Scootaloo started to speak, then thought and then resumed "That's not a simple spell, and she isn't doing it easily. I think... I think that's somehow part of the ritual, the casting of a powerful spell being used as one of the steps of the ritual magic, but... It shouldn't be what she planned at first. I think using that magic was a backup plan to keep the ritual going while in battle."
"So she can use that spell and fight us while continuing the ritual, but it will slow down her progress or something like that?" Spike asked.
"Yeah. That should be the case." Scootaloo agreed.
"Then we should put even more pressure on her and try to fully disrupt her ritual magic." Sweetie Belle stated.
The other three nodded their agreement, so the Knights began to prepare for their next attack. However, Starlight Glimmer was faster.
"Rise, Bridge to the Heavens..." She chanted, and her water defense, which had been reduced by more than half by the previous attack, once again grew in volume, drawing equally from the ocean and the air before it expanded upwards like a gigantic reverse waterfall, reaching the same altitude as the Knights.
It stopped rising at that point, and Starlight opened her mouth to chant once again as her movement also ground to a halt.
"Everyone, full defense!!" Scootaloo shouted, giving voice to the sudden overwhelming feeling of danger that resounded within her whole being.
The others did not hesitate. With a cry of "Protecting Dragon Barrier!" Spike morphed his body again, creating two pairs of incredibly sturdy wings that folded together to envelop both him and the Crusaders in a spherical protection, followed by Applebloom taking the lead and manifesting Moondancer's cutie mark with a declaration of "Bond Invocation: Dragon Enhance!". The magic was an altered version of the ritual spell Moondancer had used while fighting alongside Spike before.
Spike permitted the magic to course through his body, and it did exactly what the name implied, enhancing every single aspect of his technique and physique. The layers of his protection magic were reinforced and reorganized into a complex pattern designed to disperse the force of any attacks hitting it as much as possible, the channels his magic coursed through were made wider, the energy condensed itself further and flowed faster... There were a thousand and one small optimizations, born from the extensive research undergone by many generations of equestrian mages, all put together into a truly marvelous magic.
It was just in time, as Starlight finished her chant:
"Light from the multiple Words bordering the Bridge, Converge together into Pure Annihilation... Prismatic Megiddo!"
The gigantic waterfall had first turned completely still and clear as the unicorn spoke, and then seemed to briefly transform into a combination of hundreds of eddies that were almost instantly concealed when the entire waterfall was lit up by a blinding light.
Then it fired. And each and every single drop of water seemed to act as a prism, for what came out was a gigantic rainbow beam that flickered madly between pure white, normal rainbow colors and such strange ones that even the best artist would be hard-pressed to replicate, since the singular rainbow was actually hundreds of millions of small rainbows that mixed and interfered with each other in chaotic ways. It also widened itself in an expansion that seemed poised to englobe the whole world.
The beam hit Spike's defense with power strong enough to demolish a mountain, but the Knights held. Yet the attack kept on going, slowly grinding down even the incredible combined resistance of Starlight's opponents. Soon enough it became clear that they would be unable to outlast it.
So it was a good thing that such wasn't the plan.
"Ghhhnn!" Starlight Glimmer grunted as a purple energy sphere seemed to appear from nowhere and slammed into the side of her head with an explosion.
As it made contact, a thousand runes manifested on top of the unicorn's coat, those being her automatic defense spells that managed to prevent the sneaky strike from dealing heavy damage. But that wasn't enough to prevent her from losing concentration, causing her intense attack to break apart and allowing the Knights to emerge feeling a bit drained but overall unharmed.
One of said Knights, Scootaloo, turned her gaze towards Starlight Glimmer and let out a "Tsk!" of disappointment.
"So your automatic protection spells were this strong, huh... I really thought that would have done more." She said.
Indeed. The seemingly desperate attempt to defend kickstarted by the pegasus had been a trick. While the Crusaders were flying towards their draconic partner, Scootaloo had cast a special spell, sending a magical seed that automatically (and stealthily) moved in position behind the opponent before shifting into stage two and turning into a brutal burst while too close for the enemy to react.
Scootaloo's intuition had told her that Starlight would be unable to detect said spell while commanding such a powerful magic that took so much concentration, specially with the filly having managed to analyze a decent portion of the ritual magic and thus calibrating the energy pattern of her own spell to camouflage it among the titanic power the unicorn was throwing around.
Before the Knights were able to muster another attack, Starlight took off again, thus the chase was resumed. Once more the Knights started gaining on their enemy and eventually reached a good enough range to attack. Except this time they decided on a slightly different assault strategy.
"Dragon Soul Burst!" Spike declared, unleashing his draconic power in the shape of a tempestuous purple aura around his body.
His speed suddenly almost doubled, and he dove towards Starlight like the combination of an eagle and a meteor, launching claw shaped energy blasts as he went. The unicorn commanded her water cloak to gather into a barrier that absorbed blast after blast, but quickly seemed to be reaching its limits as the dragon got closer. However, that was enough to buy time for Starlight to pull out a small hexagonal crystal and push her magic into it, activating a spell that the crystal had been charged with. She then threw it towards the approaching dragon at the same time as her barrier finally brokje.
The crystal exploded into six streams of energy that converged, forming a magic circle pattern that manifested dozens of light barriers arranged into the shape of a mandala, which collided against the dragon and stopped his charge. But Starlight didn't get a break because of it, as the Crusaders immediately swooped in. Sweetie Belle and Applebloom were currently manifesting the cutie marks of Shining Armor and Rainbow Dash respectively, leaving Scootaloo in charge of their construct, which had taken the shape of a bird wearing plate armor as it flew at the enemy even faster than what Spike had done. And that wasn't all.
"Lightning Crasher!" Scootaloo shouted, and the right wing of the 'bird' flapped once, throwing the air into disorder and generating a terrifying amount of lightning energy that surrounded their form as the Crusaders' construct attempted to tackle their enemy.
Starlight Glimmer wouldn't simply allow that, though. She pulled out a second crystal containing a spell, this time one shaped more like a pentagon, and manipulated every single remaining scrap of her water cloak to sublimate all at once, turning the resulting burst of water vapor into extra speed to earn herself the couple of seconds needed to activate said crystal and throw it at the Crusaders.
This one exploded into a single energy stream that spun into a funnel and burst into flames, creating a flaming tornado that collided with the Knights' construct and exploded with such power that even their ferocious momentum was stopped short. But then Spike took the lead in the chase once again, having recovered from his delay during the previous confrontation. And thus the Knights' strategy became clear: They were attacking at staggered timings to prevent Starlight from slowing down all of them at once, thus keeping a constant pressure on the unicorn.
Spike took his chance and unleashed a large energy blast shaped like a dragon's mouth biting down, and Starlight didn't have any more water to buy herself time. However, that didn't mean she was out of tricks, as the unicorn pulled out yet another crystal and, rather than inserting magic to activate it, broke it while still within her hand, causing the spell inside to break apart explosively into a whirlwind of chaotic purple lightning that consumed Spike's energy blast entirely.
Starlight did not have it all her own way, as her automatic defenses had to kick in again to protect her from doing the equivalent of detonating a bomb with her bare hooves, but it didn't seem to matter to the unicorn, whose horn lit up as she worked her magic on the shattered fragments of the spell formula that didn't get a chance to activate and somehow weaved them together into a new spell that condensed the lightning whirlwind into hundreds of small energy blasts aimed at the dragon.
'How is this even possible?' Spike wondered as he blocked Starlight Glimmer's absurd feat of magic, once again falling behind as the Crusaders charged forward.
Starlight's energy blasts had also worked to accelerate her once more after her previous brief pause, but they were still far too close for her to use her prepared spells normally, so they braced for another crazy counter as they got into attack range. Yet they were still surprised.
"Manifest Power: Eternal Hail Storm." She declared. The ocean's power raged again, and the air released an infernal sound as hundreds of heavy and sharp pieces of hail suddenly manifested themselves, cutting through the wind like the sharpest knives in existence.
The hail fell only around Starlight Glimmer, but in a large area that essentially became an extreme hazard zone, and it was all the Crusaders could do to avoid taking heavy damage as they retreated outside the hail's reach.
"Again?" Applebloom exclaimed once they were out "But if she could do that the whole time, then..."
"She couldn't!" Scootaloo exclaimed, suddenly very sure "Using spells as part of the ritual has great power, but it should also have drawbacks! She probably needs to wait some time between Manifest Power activations, so she was using those prepared spells to buy time!"
"That's good to know, but we have more important things to worry about." Sweetie Belle noted "Manifest Power is just a set up, the real attack will come next."
As if on cue, Starlight Glimmer began to chant:
"Revive, Merciless Ice Age bringing forth Extinction..." And a terrifying cold seemed to envelop the whole area.
The Crusaders flew away as fast as they could, desperately gathering their power and only barely aware of Spike approaching them.
"The Ancient Winter Cold that returns All to Zero... Absolute Freeze!"
Sound ceased to exist. The water current and the rushing wind both became deathly still as the cold expanded. But then, a voice resounded.
"Frost Dragon's Scales!" Spike declared, spreading his wings to the sides.
The wings enlarged themselves far more than he had ever done before. They also grew thicker and developed deep blue scales that were some of the most perfect insulators one could imagine. Even with that, Spike ended up frozen in place after a few seconds when faced with the unbearable cold. But his efforts had provided a screen for the Crusaders.
The construct of the three fillies had changed again, turning into an almost perfect shimmering sphere. Sweetie Belle was now the one in charge of it, but the most notable aspect were the bonds manifested by the othert two, or rather, the fact that they were both manifesting Sunset Shimmer's cutie mark. And that wasn't all.
"Bond Invocation!" Sweetie Belle declared, calling on the power of Sunset's cutie mark as well. The duo's manifestation began to resonate with her invocation, bringing forth even greater power, so much that Sweetie struggled to vocalize her next words while trying to control it "Triad Bond... Heart of Power!"
At that point even the air in Sweetie's lungs was beginning to freeze, but the tremendous power flowing through her outright refused to allow her words to stop as she finished the incantation "Sun's Might: Dawnbreaker!"
The spherical construct surrounding the Crusaders transformed into a small star and formed a resonance with the sun itself, drawing power from it. That was the effect of maximizing their use of Sunset's bond, they had become able to copy even such an advanced technique of hers.
And the power gained from that was considerable. Even just the sheer heat emitted by their construct after the initial resonance was already enough to weaken the ice trapping Spike to the point where he could break out, which gave Sweetie an open line of fire. She then shot an extremely powerful solar beam that easily broke apart Starlight's powerful spell. A bit too easily, in fact.
""""What?!"""" The four Knights were flabbergasted to see that their enemy had already taken off in flight once more, the constant hail around her having turned into something resembling an asteroid belt, with the hundreds of ice pieces orbiting around the fleeing unicorn.
"Tch! She gave us no chance to counter-attack, but in that case... Spike, hold onto us!" Sweetie spoke, and as soon as the dragon did as asked, she turned back and blasted a jet of intense solar energy to propel the group forward, quickly accelerating them close to the speed to sound and making up for the gap Starlight had opened, Spike holding onto them all the while.
Once they were close, the Knights initiated a new series of attacks, but Starlight kept them at bay by use of her orbiting defenses time and again, until Scootaloo realized that something was up.
'She's stalling again. Is she waiting to use Manifest Power again? But something seems wrong... Wait, wasn't she going to the next ritual site? We've been moving for a while and still haven't got there, or actually... Ah!' The filly suddenly realized something horrifying.
"We got tricked again!" She shouted "She's been leading us in circles around the third ritual site! She must able to finish from range!" She shouted to the others.
But at that point, it was already too late.
+0+
Deep beneath the ocean there was another crystal similar to the one Starlight had used when they first found her, and next to that crystal was a faint, wavering image of Starlight Glimmer, her horn lit up and commanding the magic of the ritual.
Soon enough, it was done. The entire ocean raged as the magic of the ritual's three parts gathered together at the center of the ritual sites. Then the ocean's water dramatically increased in volume, as if a continent swallowing flood was commencing. But instead of the water rushing up the beaches and covering the earth, it simply rose further and further into the air, like the largest wave that could ever exist.
And then that wave began to change shape, and it didn't take long for even observers thousands of kilometers away to be able to understand what was going on.
The absurd, colossal wave... Was turning into a Castle.