Twilight's thoughts raced along with her body.
Good news, her friends were out of Tirek's clutches, and she had what could very well be the Key of Magic.
Bad news, she'd kind of botched the whole "keep alicorn magic out of Tirek's hands" thing. It was worth it, especially if this worked, but in the meantime, he was very nearly a physical god. They'd beaten a physical god before... but so had he. Said physical god was running at her side, similarly disempowered.
Twilight's body tried to intrude with something about being tired. She paid it no mind. She didn't have time for exhaustion right now.
More good news, Tirek was too distracted processing the accumulated magic of four alicorns to notice the ponies and draconequus slip away before he could crush them like insects.
Twilight made a mental note to reread those books on positive thinking if she survived this. When. When she survived this. She mentally underlined the note.
At that point, they had made it to the Tree of Harmony's grotto. Twilight held Scorpan's amulet to the box and crossed her primaries. As it transformed and was pulled into place, she felt a tremendous weight lift from her withers. This was going to work. "Together!" she cried. "I think we have to do this togeth—"
"Come on, girls!" Dash was already there. Dash had already turned the Key of Loyalty. Of course.
Twilight swallowed as surreptitiously as she could. "Well, it should still work. Come on, everypony."
Five more keys turned, and the ground began to shake.
Tirek snarled and swept another devastating blast across the forest. He might have unparalleled levels of power, but he still had the same intellect that had helped him escape the inescapable. If he left an alicorn free, she could act as a rallying point for those who might think to resist his rightful rule. That could not stand. She may have slipped away for a moment, but he would find her.
A tremor brought his attention to a ruined castle. Perhaps this "Princess Twilight" had found some forgotten artifact of the older alicorns? Tirek grinned. It would no doubt be delicious.
The tremor intensified, and the sound of stone grinding on stone rose above it. Tirek's grin widened in anticipation. He imagined the look on her face as her final, desperate hope was dashed. It would be beautiful.
A dust cloud rose from the ledge on one side of the castle. Tirek nodded. The castle itself was far too obvious a target. He'd have to remember to annihilate it while the fledgling princess watched.
Then the ledge detached itself from the rest of the forest, and Tirek's grin faltered a bit. Stone and soil arranged themselves into a crude mockery of his own magnificent form, and he scowled. This was far too elaborate for some automated defense. He had somehow missed something with enough power to craft a golem this immense in a matter of seconds. What else had Discord so conveniently "forgotten" to tell him?
Instead of his own illustrious visage, the golem had some manner of staging platform. Tirek squinted. Some manner of glowing crystal and... yes. Yes, really. Princess Twilight and her precious little "friends," Discord included. Completely and totally exposed, the fools. Tirek approached the construct, firing a blast at them as he did so.
His magic struck an invisible shield, fractured into rainbows, and was drawn into the golem. A flash of light, and even from this distance, he could tell that the ponies had somehow become even more garish. Tirek snarled and charged. Hand-to-hand combat it was.
He took a pair of hind hooves to the chest and was thrown back. He hadn't expected something so large and slapdash to be so quick.
"Equestria rejects you, Tirek!" cried the princess.
Tirek rolled his eyes. Always with the speeches, these ponies. Even before his imprisonment, they never stopped talking. He opened his maw wide. He'd just suck the magic out of the cursed construct.
He drew in nothing, then took a bone-shattering punch to the jaw. "The ponies reject you!" added the unicorn.
An uppercut to the chin. "All creatures reject you!" Fluttershy, Discord's pet pony. A surprising amount of fire in that one.
A one-two from the front hooves into his solar plexus, giving him a bit of distance. "Every dang blade o' grass rejects ya!" The one in the hat. He'd be sure to burn it to ash.
As Tirek healed himself, the golem strode forward. "Together, we're going to kick your flank all the way back to Tartarus!" The rainbow one. She had spunk.
Tirek hated spunk.
He lunged forward. The golem's arms met his, their hands intertwined, and they struggled to overpower one another. For a time, they were evenly matched. Then, slowly, methodically, Tirek could feel his opponent gain the upper hand. He saw why. Rainbows were wafting into the construct from where it made contact with him. They were stealing the magic that was rightfully his!
Tirek brought his own forehooves against the golem, making it stagger back. He backpedaled even as he called up a tremendous amount of power.
"Ooh, are you giving back more magic?" The pink one. She unsettled him. There was some aspect of her that he could not touch. "Thanks!"
He sneered. "You have outmatched me, ponies, but I will have the last laugh!" The sphere of power had grown too large to be contained between his horns. It hovered above him like a fell sun. "If I cannot have this magic, then no one can! If you do not stand down, I will destroy myself. Pony magic will die with me!"
Tirek blinked. Just a blink. A fraction of a second. And when he opened his eyes again, he was face to faces with the infuriating mares. But their determination wasn't the worst. No, that went to the smug satisfaction on Discord's face. "Surprise," said the draconequus. He pointed up.
Tirek looked. The golem's hand was plunged into the orb of magic, which was roiling, hissing, and spitting. His eyes widened. "No. NO!" He tried to release it. A beam, a burst, even just recalling it into his body. It didn't heed his commands. Instead, it leeched even more power out of him. He felt himself begin to wither, even as more colors bloomed on the surface of the sphere. "You cannot do this! This is impossible!"
"Friendship and chaos, old boy!" crowed Discord.
"When all thing are in harmony," cried the princess, "nothing is impossible!"
The last dregs of Tirek's magic were yanked out of him. The gathered prismatic energy, now an amorphous blob, wobbled around the golem's arm. It stuck the limb into the sky, and a shockwave spread as far as the eye could see.
After all ponies' magic was restored, the golem walked to the edge of Ponyville, sat, and would move no more. For reasons she would never be able to explain, Twilight felt oddly disappointed.
Meanwhile, Rarity felt a similarly inexplicable sense of gratitude towards Rainbow Dash.
Pink is a combination of Red and White...
...
OH DEAR LORD.
5143343 That reaction, I think, is something of an understatement.
5143343
I'm not sure what you're picturing, but now I'm envisioning Aurelia wrecking Tirek and it's magnificent.
5143343
Two of planeswalker Pinkie's best colors. As for the other...
Well, as you may know, I associate each of the Elements of Harmony with a specific color of magic. (Except Magic, of course.) And Laughter? Laughter is black.
5143519 ... Zurgo gon' smash some helm?
... Now I'm trying to fit the Mane Six into the clans, and it's actually pretty hard. Twilight would pretty much have to be Jeskai; Rarity might do okay in Sultai (she handled Orzhov pretty well, after all), though she might also get eaten; Dash is Mardu, no question, and Pinkie's color preferences put her there as well, though I think she could also jive with Abzan; Fluttershy would by either Abzan or Temur (kind of leaning towards the latter because EXTREME BEAR MASSAGES!); and Applejack would probably also be Temur, if only because there isn't really anywhere else to put her.
5144267 Well, Applejack's focus on family pretty much puts her in Abzan, in this case.
Pinkie might actually be Jeskai, or at least a part of the Kaisham Wanderers.
Other than that, though, I don't see much else wrong (except maybe Rarity/Sultai, but then, I can't think of anywhere better).
5144497 Angles I had not considered. Point well-made. Like I said, actually pretty hard
NNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! I was expecting a Super Sentai Parody!!!! Why you lie to me!!!!!!!!!!????????????!!!!!!!????????????
On an unrelated note, this chapter was rather nice, well done.
5145569
Really, I just skipped to the part where the giant robot fights the giant monster.
5144267 5144497
Firstly, note that I have no plans to write an Implicit Neighs-style Tarkir fic. (Princesses of Tarkir? Did Star Swirl learn time magic from Ugin? No, no, I said I wasn't going to.) That being said, here's my read on the Mane Six:
Applejack: Abzan. This one's a no-brainer. The clan is a hyperextended family structure that reveres the trees where they bury their ancestors. Their play strategy rewards patience and hard work. There's really not much more to say on the matter.
Fluttershy: Temur. She'd make an incredible shaman, and you would not want her to awaken the bear. She wrestles bears in canon; "ferocious" wouldn't even begin to describe her in this setting.
Rainbow Dash: Mardu. Again, a no-brainer. The entire clan's philosophy resolves around the speed of the dragon, their symbol is wings, and one of their best spells is lightning that strikes everywhere.
Twilight Sparkle: Jeskai. Once again, obvious. Twilight would walk the Path of the Mystic, and she'd probably be mastering ghostfire when most initiates would still be trying to snatch pebbles out of their masters' hands. Also, the mental image of Twilight knowing martial arts is kind of fantastic.
Rarity: Jeskai. Rarity is trickier. Yes, the Sultai are the ones with all the money, but I don't think she'd be at all happy there. The Jeskai Way would offer the Path of the Artisan, where Rarity could refine her craft and use it as a way to reach enlightenment. Plus, the image of her fighting using elegant, telekinetically manuevered ribbons is perfectly Rarity.
Pinkie Pie: Pinkie is the odd one out here. Tarkir is a world at war. Where does a living embodiment of joy and frivolity fit in here? Her form of WBR is very different from the Mardu. If I were to write this sort of story, I'd need to use either a Pinkamena who had never seen the rainbow or planeswalker Pinkie. As has been noted, the Kaisham Wanderers could work for her, but she just doesn't seem to mesh with Tarkir as a whole.
(Hmm. Should this be a blog post?)
5147687
Mayhaps it could be a blog post if you also put in what Shards they would have belonged to and why.
Or these could be something else as seen through Dack's What If machine.
I like this variant of the defeat of Tirek. I'm not that familiar with the various version of the Power Rangers series, but I liked this a lot. I also think you got Discord's personality spot-on here.
Oh but I do.
6654780
Let's just say Discord would've strongly approved.
I'm not even going to pretend to understand this one.
7108441
Which part? The giant robot, the Super Sentai reference made because of the giant robot, the reasoning behind the giant robot?
7109320
A little from column A, a little from column C.
I'm familiar enough with the Super Sentai genre to get most or all of the references coming from that end, and to not question where exactly the mecha came from, but the hows and whys escape me. Mostly I'm confused by how this connects to a MtG card.
(Also, Rarity's inexplicable sense of gratitude at the end seems to come out of nowhere, and I haven't the foggiest idea how it fits into the story or why it happens. But that's a rather minor detail.)
7109970
The Rainbow Power was unlocked by the Mane Six all turning their keys at the same time. Given that, suppose turning the keys in a different sequence yields a different result. By giving primacy to the Key of Loyalty, the result is sure to be awesome.
The card connection is fairly straightforward. The area around the Tree of Harmony turns into a centauroid altar golem, with the Tree itself at the head.
The bit about Rarity's gratitude was a crack at the tackiness of Twilight's castle. This was written shortly after the Season 4 finale, after all.
Rainbow would be the most likely pony to be interested in giant mecha.
(I'm posting this comment from my computer, which reveals the reason I didn't get the card connection: most images don't show up on the mobile browser version of the site, and I originally read this on my phone, so I didn't see the image in the author's footnote.)
So, what happens if each of the other Elements have Primacy? Or certain combinations? Like everyone except Laughter has Primacy?