The stilt snaps, like ordinary wood; the clown falls, lands on the shorter stilt, and then sticks out its other leg and starts spinning like a top, heading toward Kaylee.

She swipes at the remaining stilt, lengthening her sword if she has to.

She hits, but the familiar keeps going.

Kaylee conjures two more daggers and pitches them at the clown-shape.  They make contact, and it bursts like a balloon.  She smirks.

Meanwhile, Mallory and Sophie have been fighting their two.

By now they'll probably have taken them down.  They're intimidating but not all that tough, apparently.

"Good job, girls," Mallory says, standing over the popped familiar. "Let's keep going."

And onward.

A few more clown-shapes accost them along the way, but with four magical girls against one familiar they're easily dispatched.

The tents get smaller and smaller as they move deeper into the barrier.  On the inside, they're as small as actual circus tents, and on the outside they look barely large enough to fit all four of them.

"I think... we're getting close?"  She inflects it like a question, and glances at Mallory.

"Feels like it."

She leads them into another tent, this one all red.  There is only one smaller tent nested inside.

"Feels like... a straightaway.  Like, maybe all the tents from here on out will only have the one smaller tent inside them."

A few jugglers emerge from the tent in the center, moving like cartoons or bobbleheads.

Mallory, Lianne, and Sophie all pick their targets. Lianne mostly stays back to keep the familiars off the ranged fighters.

Kaylee flicks a new pair of knives into existence, blades swept back for slashing, and runs toward her target.  (It feels so amazing to move this fast.)  She cuts two gashes into the juggler's stomach, in opposite directions, then flips the knives around in her palms and stabs them into its heart.  It explodes.

Lianne's familiar pitches a few of its juggling-clubs at her.  Mallory's and Sophie's march forward steadily, guffawing all the while.

Lianne blocks the clubs with the flat of her blade then charges forward and swings, while both Mallory and Sophie stick to ranged.

Lianne's familiar is sliced cleanly in half, its upper body pinwheeling through the air for a split second, almost comically, before both halves burst.  Mallory's and Sophie's go down just as easily.

Kaylee's still grinning.  "This way," she says, gesturing toward the remaining tent.

Lianne grins back at her and follows, Mallory and then Sophie taking up the rear.

Tent.  Tent.  Tent.

Ah, this seems to be the main event.

Not just circus tents but an actual circus: acrobats and clowns, juggling and diving and swinging, elephants braying and tigers snarling, all moving in counter-rotating circles around the vast thing in the center:

A floating shape like a person's upper body, dressed in an old and filthy but immaculately tailored suit and hat; four stick-thin arms with enormous hands, each holding a jeweled cane; a face that's all eyes and mouth.  It's babbling nonsense in a ringmaster's overdramatic bellow.

"The ringmaster's the main threat, but don't drop your guard around the familiars," Mallory says, lining up her first shots. 

Lianne nods and says, "I can take care of the familiars," remembering how she got bitten on her first fight, and positions herself to intercept anything coming at the ranged fighters, while Sophie starts chucking spears at the witch.

"I'm with Lianne," Kaylee says.  She twirls two new knives into existence, these ones thin and pointed for stabbing, held in reverse grip.

The witch gestures and gives some sort of command, and tigers start rushing toward the four of them.

She grins briefly at Kaylee, then goes to attack the tigers.

Tigers go down even more easily than clowns!  A single strike with a sword, or a stab in the neck, is enough to make them pop.

After Kaylee's taken down two of them and left the knives where they fall, a third pounces her; she ducks and slides like she did against Lianne's threads, conjures another slashing-knife, and cuts open the tiger's belly as it soars over her.

(This is so easy, this is what she was supposed to be doing all along, how could she ever have been afraid of this.)

Lianne's having fun fighting, but she's still keeping an eye on their surroundings - mostly watching that nothing attacks Sophie and Mallory, and in case the witch sends anything else after them. 

Two more throws, slash this one's neck and then split that one's skull in half - 

She's getting caught up in it.  If one of the tigers goes for Mallory, she may not notice.

Luckily Lianne's focusing more on defense, and moves to take down anything that slips past Kaylee.