The playing field that manifested before Twilight in this mindscape was pretty much what she expected. The arena's formation for participants of such a duel would structure itself based on the experiences and memories of each participant. considering how young and new she was to the world, it would make sense that the mindscape would lean heavily towards the mind of the Goddess thousands of years her senior. Catrina was the one who constructed this type of dueling as well, which made her ability to assume dominance over how the playing field was initially set up that much more effective. There was also that she had controlled a massive portion of the planet back when she was in power, so the types of locations and cities she had to draw from was innumerable. This particular arena's construction was in the vain of what looked like one of the more northern regions of the planet, probably a facsimile of her capital city if Twilight could hazard a guess. Though she possessed an affinity for Pyramids and Arabian architecture, she also loved the cold and snow, which led to a dissonance in the way her former civilization constructed their architecture back in those ancient times.

Many of the towering buildings that surrounded Twilight had impressively ornate onion like domes, crested with jewels and gold that shimmered through the snow that clung to their surfaces. They peppered the skyline in all shapes, sizes and girths, some times dozens of them extending from one single structure. The buildings themselves, though made of stone of various colors, seemed to almost grow out of the ground and spread out like a cross between trees and mushrooms. In all likelihood they possibly were considering magic was abundant in Catrina's kingdom at that time. It gave the feeling of both being inside of an expansive city and a forest that stretched to the sky, made of a variety of gold, stone, and precious jewels, all of which had a thick layer of snow caked overtop of it.

The silence that came with this massive mental construct felt oppressive and off-putting for the filly, despite feeling mentally prepared for this conflict. A city this large and grandiose, meant to have inhabitants bustling within it by the millions. It's a place meant for governments and guards roaming the ornate cobbled streets. It's a place meant to have shop owners advertising their quality goods to the passers-by to illicit new customers. All of that noise and ambiance that would have come with a massive city like this was simply gone, replaced only with the cold and silence of the winter that Catrina placed in this mindscape. Twilight braced herself where she stood. There were far too many windows and places to hide in a city like this. She could come from anywhere and it would be very easy to catch the filly unawares. She needed to remain vigilant.

The silence became interrupted by a rumble in the ground underneath her hooves. That rumble grew stronger and more intense until it turned Twilight's vision into a blurred mess and threatened to knock her off her hooves entirely. She had heard of quakes like this as a foal, but Equestria wasn't known for such occurrences since the tectonic plates beneath it were particularly stable. It made it very difficult for her to adjust and brace herself against the jarring vibrations rattling her immature bone structure. Her teeth clattered against each other as she gritted them, trying to keep herself focused for whatever attack Catrina was planning. In a Mindscape battle, you were restricted to the capabilities and knowledge you have in your prime. There would be no exploiting the illusion of the world in front of them in ways they could not do in the real world. It would defeat the purpose and spirit of the game.

It wasn't until something new began to loom over the skyline that Twilight realized what Catrina was up too. Twilight watched in awe as her opponent loomed over the bulbous towers and continued to grow before her eyes. She had read about how Catrina was capable of manipulating the scale of her body at will, but she hadn't fully grasped what that meant until she saw the sheer scale of the giant feline goddess before her. Her bar uniform was gone, replaced with the ornate and brightly colored armor and crown the filly had seen crude sketches of in the few books and scrolls about her that existed in Equestria. Each Jewel on her ever-expanding crown was probably worth enough bits to feed the entirety of equestria for lifetimes considering their scale. Before long, Catrina's body loomed over Twilight like a mountain that had spontaneously materialized in the city. It gave the filly pause, realizing just how massive this arena was since the disruption that her growth had caused was still quite far away, even though the titanic feline felt distressingly close to where she was due to her proportions. In a single relatively small step Catrina could easily be on top of her with the way their height differences were at this moment. She was like a mere insect that was about to take on a minotaur.

Twilight peered up at the massive cat through the atmosphere that nearly obscured her head and shoulders, adding to the sense of depth her unnatural scale had, and watched as Catrina lifted her mountain sized limbs experimentally. The growing joy on her face as she flexed her claws and her power. It must have been so liberating to have her power again, even in this facsimile of reality. She lifted her arms high into the air in a strangely regal pose, nearly making them vanish from Twilight's sight entirely in the bluish atmosphere above before she began to drag them slowly back down. Duplicates of her arms morphed out of her originals and remained in place, giving a cascading array of her now numerous limbs that were all held in different poses symmetrical with their opposite, all coming to a stop as she brought her immense hands together, delicately posing her fingers in an intricate symbol. Twilight could see why so many bowed to her Majesty back when she was in power.

Twilight took a deep breath and lowered herself to the ground, spreading her legs as far as they could and bracing them for what was to come. Her goal was not to beat this colossal deity, but to merely prove to it that she could learn her magic. Those were the rules that they had agreed upon, and it was the adherence to this stipulation that was saving her from losing her nerve entirely. Even with the Amulet holding back her weaknesses and helping to keep her immature mind from giving into fear, she could still feel the individual hairs on her body standing on end in fright. It even gave the voices of the Amulet momentary pause as she watched the silent figure intently, waiting for her to make a move.

The magical pact they had made would keep Catrina following her to the ends of the world and back for the rest of Twilight's time alive. Keeping herself in check and not screaming in terror at what was before her was the best thing she could with such a prize on the line, and with the stakes being so dire if she failed. Twilight opened her mind, drawing on her pool of knowledge that she had at her disposal, and she prayed that her intuition was enough to keep herself from utterly failing in this conflict to come. The anticipation, the calm before this storm she felt, it made everything about this challenge that much more daunting.

Twilight watched as Catrina breathed in through her nose, expanding her chest as she filled her now gargantuan lungs with air.

Twilight almost didn't respond in time when the tops of the buildings began to break off of their foundations. The filly made herself even smaller against the ground, binding her hooves and body to the cobblestone as the powerful suction of air finally reached her body. Her muscles screamed out in protest as she hung on for dear life. She suddenly found it difficult to breathe in the intense updraft that the suction was causing, and it made keeping her eyes closed very difficult. Her ears were in so much pain as the world around her began to rip apart by a simple intake of breathe. Her skin felt like it was going to rip straight off her body as chariots and anything that wasn't firmly bolted to the ground spiraled through the air towards the Goddess. She was a singularity in this moment, a place where everything in the immediate area drew towards. This was not a duel between a potential teacher and student, this was a filly facing down the living embodiment of a natural disaster.

Even the larger buildings were beginning to buckle under this deep breath's intensity. Catrina looked so at peace as she breathed in, the destruction happening beneath her barely registering to her own senses as she just enjoyed her power once again. The Ground that Twilight had clung too was beginning to crack. If this kept up she would be sucked into that vortex above her faster than she would have been able to react. She was going to fail before Catrina had cast a spell.

The world grew still suddenly. All of the chaos that had ensued from that simple action from Catrina seemed to halt, leaving only the reverberating echoes of destruction in its wake. Twilight's blood ran cold and her ears flattened against her skull as she realized that Catrina had held her breath. She looked up in time to see the debris that had collected in a spiral in the sky above her slowed their assent and stopped in the sky, momentarily hanging there in the sky above until they slowly began to fall back down to the battlefield below. Twilight let out a strained noise of fright as she let herself free from the magic holding her in place and began to gallop as fast as her tiny legs could carry her. She helped herself along by creating crude constructs of acceleration magic that made her body momentarily pickup speed before needing another strategically paced glyph to keep up the pace. It was a dangerous method of fleeing that did not offer much in the way of maneuverability, but she was able to aim her trajectory away from the falling hunks of building that crashed into the ground with the same intensity as a hail storm. She was like ball being bounced around a pinball machine of her own design, intuitively bouncing herself away from each new hunk of a building that nearly flattened her down into alleyways and into other streets. Catrina could see her movements as she held her breath, watching the tiny creature darting about beneath her in what looked like a jagged purple streak of light. she smirked at this and tapped one of the particularly hefty portions of building, sending it careening where the filly was speeding towards.

It was everything Twilight could do to halt her momentum and prevent herself from getting smacked by that building that crashed down into the street in front of her. Her body floundered as she tried to weave spells fast enough to get her out of the dead-end she found herself in. She met with near death as the other end of the street closed itself off by falling debris as well, leaving her trapped inside of the street. Her ears flattened again as the rest of the jagged hunks of buildings honed in on her from a wave of one of Catrina's hands. Catrina had spotted her now, and had her trapped right where she wanted her. Twilight was going to get buried under tons of ornate stone if she didn't react soon enough. The amulet's voices showed her a spell in her mind's eye, and out of instinct she gripped the street, using the spell. This trust in her amulet awarded her with a dome of impenetrable glass that formed around herself just as the debris met her, dulling the sounds of roar of the crashing debris as they piled on top of her. With a flex of her magic she expanded the size of the dome to force the pile of rubble from her, pressing it into the buildings around her as she got her bearings and locked her eyes back on Catrina.

The cat goddess looked downright mischievous as she looked down at the already haggard filly whom was catching her breath inside her temporary defenses. Her massive face puffed out in an almost comedic manner, showing twilight that she was holding her breath and keeping back a ton of air that she built up in her lungs, enough that it puffed out her cheeks. Twilight's eyes dilated as she realized the implications of what that could mean. If her breathing in and holding her breath had caused this much destruction and mayhem that even the Amulet had to find was to preserve itself under its onslaught, how much more would her blowing out air cause?

Her mind was a garbled mess of fight and flight reflexes as she watched Catrina release the air she had held back with her pursed lips.

Fly up! Flee! Teleport! We shall die if you stay! Don't stay! Teleport! Fly Into the sky! Into the sky pony! No refuge on the ground! Flee!

Her voices were in accordance, mentally slapping her into focus as the wall of air crashed towards them. It was everything she could do not to completely lock up in terror, seeing the buildings miles in front of her be shattered into powder as Catrina lazily blew downward, taking her time lifting her head as she brought her torrent of breath over to Twilight's destination. The buildings didn't just collapse under the gale of wind, the buildings became pulverized into nothingness, leaving only a growing scar in the ground in the exhalations wake.

Twilight dug deep and used the teleportation spell that the Amulet was flashing at her repeatedly, it's alarming voices drowning out her own thoughts as she flashed from her place on the ground into the sky above. The shift in perspective was jarring going from ground level to miles in the air. From high up in the sky she was only somewhat higher than the cat herself. Below her the surreal path of destruction that she was in now was a distant rumble on the ground below. Catrina's breath carved out a perfect wave of destruction, creating a scar in the otherwise pristine and ornate city around her, the buildings around the cat's feet were likewise destroyed from when she had grown into the titanic size she was now. All this destruction that Twilight had seen unfold had been down without Catrina using a single visible spell. If things kept up like this she had no chance of passing this test.

Catrina straightened her posture and glanced up at the filly as she began falling from the sky into her line of sight. Twilight was instinctively clinging onto her amulet for dear life as the ground below her gradually was rushing up to meet her, as well as flinching away from the gaze of the goddess that felt like two celestial bodies were locking their sight one her minuscule, insignificant body.

All sound seemed robbed from the fillies senses as Catrina's eyes flared to life with green energy. They glowed with the intensity of twin suns, causing Twilight to throw up her hooves to shield herself from the sudden intensity of the emerald light. Out of instinct Twilight teleported again, this time up and over to the west by several miles to get out of the way of the blast, though she didn't feel like she had moved much in relation to Catrina's massive form that still felt close. She had warped away just in time to miss two massive beams of green energy that arced across the sky without a single sound. It was almost like this magical lasers sucked all ambient noise out of the world as they careened off into the snowy horizon. That silence persisted until the two beams of magic touched ground far into the distance near the horizon line. Two giant clouds in the shape of mushrooms issued out from where they had struck, and the filly could feel the twin shockwaves of where those intense blasts had issued even from her position hundreds of miles away and falling through the sky. The force of those blasts knocked her off-balance in the air, making her tumble about for several precious seconds before she had regained a more aerodynamic posture made for sky diving like she had read about.

Mother of Luna! Those kinds of attacks would be enough to wipe Canterlot off the map! I had read of her power but this is insane! How could one being have this much raw magical power!? Even the Alicorn's haven't been recorded using magic like this! Can Celestia do that? Can anypony? Is it even possible to get that level of prowess without being born with it? Am I going to die!? Why am I smiling!? Why am I so excited?! One wrong move and I'm finished!

Despite her fears and doubt, Twilight's body was rushing with adrenaline and she had a massive grin plastered over her face. Despite all logic to the contrary, she was getting a thrill out of narrowly escaping death from this goddess. Her body was craving more of this. It loved being on the brink of death like she was playing with right now. She wanted this feeling to last, even if it meant her certain and inevitable doom.

“Come on little gnat! Show me how you are worthy of MY knowledge! MY POWER!”

Twilight burst into laugher as she fell through the sky, embracing the insanity of the situation as she extended her limbs out with glee, even as Catrina raised one of her monolithic hands out above her head. Demented mirth and determination formed Twilight's expression as she watched the immense glyph forming in Catrina's palm, taking note of every little detail she could as it was woven before her. For every one symbol that Twilight knew, there were a hundred that she had never seen before. She was eager to see this new magic in action, to see what it could do. She put the pieces of what she did know together like a puzzle in her mind, parsing out as much information as she could, much like she would when she tried to reverse engineer languages. Twilight grin broadened as she began to understand the intensely glowing glyph, connecting it with the drop in temperature that was surrounding her. Her horn flared and she warped out-of-the-way of the radius of the attack, openly letting out peels of laughter miles higher in the air even as her lungs craved thicker atmosphere instead of this thin air she was in.

Twilight's dilated pupils watched as her suspicions be confirmed, and saw a deadly glacier erupt from where she was going if she had remained. The spiked glacier of ice would have utterly crushed her where she was, ending their little game immediately. She felt like she was playing chess, and her opponent was able to get her in check with every turn she took. It was only her wit and her quick movements that kept her proverbial king piece moving out of danger just long enough to mount a counter attack. It was exhilarating parsing the magic she had just witnessed, her mind putting each new piece of data in new and interesting combinations with the magic she already knew.

All of Catrina's arms were weaving that spell countless times over. With each repetition of the spell and each glyph that hung in the air, Twilight was able parse out more and more data from it. The adrenaline and excitement she was feeling now was putting her mind to work in a way it never had before. She felt thousands of times smarter, relishing in the challenge that seemed almost insurmountable mere moments before. Not only did she grow to understand much of the inner logic the constructs of magic had, she was confident that she had found a countermeasure for it.

Twilight teleported again, this time to the utmost edges of the mindscapes sky so she had more than enough time to fall to the ground and enact her plan. She had long since achieved terminal velocity, so she did not need to worry about miscalculating just how long she had before she hit the ground. She had seen the flaw in Catrina's spell, and now it was the time to put her plan into action. It was reckless and dangerous, but her mind felt more alive and functional than it ever had before in her young life. There was something about field experience that she had never fully understood until this moment. It was so much more exciting to learn on the fly like she was than being huddled in a library with a mountain of books.

At the moment of truth, Catrina pointed one of her fingers forward, simultaneously forming the glaciers in midair and sending them hurtling towards where Twilight's trajectory was going to have her. Twilight was laughing as she skydived into place, she was ready and prepared for what was to come.

Twilight's eyes flared red and her body halted in mid-air, forming a glyph around herself that radiated the telltale crimson glow of her Amulet. Catrina could see this glyph the filly had made, filled with novice mistakes and was entirely freeform. It barely held its shape as she poured in magic from her body and her amulet to maintain its irregular design. It was not efficient, it was not perfect, in fact it was terribly flawed, but it was the product of a gifted and intelligent mind none the less. It was a prototype, a first draft of what the spell could be instead of something entirely finished. The goddess was going to think of it as a merely valiant effort until she squinted her eyes, seeing that it was far more complex than just at first glance. This glyph, laced with another type of magic that repeated its shape throughout the macro-structure of its design, each one perfectly formed and condensed inside of the unstable glyph, keeping the design of it intact and amplifying its efficiency. It was the same type of magic that the Amulet used to amplify and multiply the fillies own powers. She had learned the nature of amplification magic and used it to her advantage with this spell.

Catrina didn't alter the course of her Glaciers or mount a counter attack against this new structure of magic Twilight had made, she merely let the events play out to see what the filly had come up with. Catrina, intrigued now, more than she had been when she had started this little exercise with the filly, watched in puzzlement as the jagged glyph condensed down to a point on the unicorn's horn. She thought at first that it had failed to maintain its shape, but the glowing angry red dot over Twilight's horn and became a super condensed version of the spell. The filly had made the seemingly unstable glyph for the purpose of being collapsible, to take advantage of the amplification magic as it condensed onto the focus of her power, her horn. It caused an impressive upsurge of magical power from the filly that the goddess couldn't help but feel impressed with.

The goddess to a partial step back as a shockwave issued from Twilight, halting the trajectory of Catrinas glaciers in their tracks, some of which were dangerously close to striking the filly before she had made her move. Normally they would have been impervious to magical attacks and shields and would have just ripped her mental body to shreds.The cat had figured she’d just try to shield against the onslaught and fail. Instead this wave of glyph infused magic unraveled her own patterns in the ice and converted the massive projectiles into steam. Twilight wasn’t done however, as she rapidly rearranged the ambient symbols still left in the air and used them to churn the towering plumb of steam into a formidable storm cloud. She was sweating bullets after these two spells, but it was more than worth it to see the look on the cat Goddesses face. She used the wind from the storm to keep her aloft as she pointed a hoof at Catrina, the second spell nestled right on its surface. Lightning issued out of the storm and struck the cat goddess in rapid succession.

Catrina didn’t even flinch as the bolts struck her. The lightning was far too feeble to actually harm anything but her pride. However that was the point. Twilight, with much less raw magical power, had managed nullify her spell and turn the remnants against her.

The point was to proven that Twilight could learn her magic.

With a disgruntled expression Catrina raised up one of her hands to signal a cease-fire. Twilight gladly obliged her, releasing the draining magic as she allowed herself to fall to the ground. She used the barest minimum of magic necessary to slow her descent and land safely in front of the gradually shrinking cat.

Their perception of reality shifted from the mindscape back to the bar still frozen by time. Everything remained exactly as it was before the mental altercation. The only difference being Twilight's shaking and sweating body from the magical exertion she had just been through. Catrina, unfazed by the affair, hadn’t even begun to use her scope of magical knowledge, but a deal is a deal. This filly had proven she could learn her magic. In fact she hated to admit how much of a natural she was at it. It took Catrina ages to learn free-from magic like that. This filly may not pack the power just yet, but with her intellect Catrina could see her ascending to another level. This filly could become something truly formidable with or without the Amulet in her possession.

“You have won your bargain filly, as much as I hate to admit it.”

Twilight bent over the counter and panted, grinning up at the Cat. “You are amazing. The scrolls do not do you justice in the least. One way or another, I’m getting your power back. I would kill to have even half your power at my side.”

Catrina couldn’t help but laugh at this. This filly had seen what her magic was truly like, and yet she was certain that Catrina would be working on HER Side? Still, if there was any being in the world that the cat believed could do it, it was this insane filly. It was enough to spark her interest at least.

“Don’t disappoint me Twilight Sparkle. I will not be slowing my lessons down for a mere filly, you best pay attention like your life depends on it.”

"Wouldn't have it any other way."