If, by any chance, you were confused by Terror's plunge into an active volcano, which you should've been confused as it was given without context as is the style of the piece to do as such, it would probably improve your idea of what happened if I were to explain it in a bit of better detail. It is as such (And with the coercion) that I must start on such a statement of what happened following said plunge with an ambiguous statement.

The world was burning. All was ashes, think choking bellows coughed up from the core of the earth. It was stagnant. harsh, grating rasping caustic fumes, with heat everywhere.

Terror was in it and he reveled in the sensation of feeling the electric hot pain of the lava lancing through his spine lighting his nerves on fire both literally and metaphorically.

Oh? But of course he didn't die. That would be a horrible way to end Terror's chapter, wouldn't it? Instead, perhaps, we should draw attention to Terror's title as written within a sub chapter. That is, Terror the Invincible. And, if you can follow what that means, it stands to follow that Terror did not choose a random volcano for this pseudo suicide. He chose one on an obscure island.

See, Terror needed a weapon. He needed a special weapon, and deep in the heart of the molten mountain, flame liquifying rock and rock liquifying flame, he found what he needed.

A perfect blade, with a breaking part several powers beyond that of the gods. One that was special. One that was... Interesting. A godblade, to be sure. Forged by gods with the souls of mortals, what it was doing here was a long story in of itself.

The Mindsword spun in the dawn's gray light
And men and demons knelt down before.
The Mindsword flashed in the midday bright
Gods joined the dance, and the march to war.
It spun in the twilight dim as well
And gods and men marched off to hell.

-Skull Twister. The sword of madness.

This was his destiny. An immortal warrior with an invincible sword. HAHAHA!

"Yes..."

He rose from the volcano like a phoenix, lava or magma, which he didn't care dripping from his form like embers, turning to rock once it splattered against the ground, leaving a trail as he flew out to sea on wings that were burnt through with flame. This was his destiny! He was so close now... He just had a few more pieces to play, a few more things to do... Just a few more final touches and he could finally face himself and be proud...

Redemption. Well... Good as place to start as any would be to try and figure out what my party members really thought of me-

But more specifically, I guess, I should be focused on avoiding Malice for as long as possible, and further, to find a way to wrest control of him whenever I can

-So I should keep in mind both of these things...

That's what I was thinking while I was slowly walking, well, stumbling, through the hallways. It was a rather... sterile place, considering I assumed I was still in the pony equivalent of the city of sin, and I had half expected provocative posters showing off the... well... prostitutes of the world to dapple the halls like a New Orleans red district. Hm... Was there an equivalent of New Orleans in Equestria?

But I kept walking, yes, that was what I had to do, I had to keep right on walking and thinking about what I was going to do, I had so much more that I could do now that I had to do now...

In fact, I didn't even know how much time I had to make up for all the time I hadn't had before.

Aw, damn it. I was just confusing myself now.

At least that was familiar enough.

I had the feeling that something was wrong, but I had long had that feeling and ignored it, and I hardly knew what I was supposed to do when I felt that anymore, short of leaving it alone and hoping it didn't involve me, despite that it always involved me. There was that feeling of hopelessness again, and I tried to ignore it in favor of not letting the tears cloud my vision. God... I was dead, dreaming, or a murderer, and I hardly knew which one would be the better choice.

...Was I a good person?

Was... I a bad person?

........It's.... such... a fine line...

Catastrophe, lying dying in a bed with a bullet removed from her chest, dreamed. It was an odd dream, to be sure, and a mere description of a description would hardly be good enough to really get by what the dream was about, and as such, I should describe the dream from her perspective.

I was floating, then. I was floating in a void while blood rose around me like the tides of an infernal... or perhaps, internal, sea. I was never that much of a poet, I point out, but something about the sanguinity, the insanity... was familiar. As too, I guess, the webs which the blood clung to, rising up like a crimson frame work from the sea of copper.

"Hello Sera." came a sibilant hiss, like many voices were speaking at once. Ivan's voice, I could hear, at the least, was one of the voices layered over like fine cheese and wine, like sand and chocolate, like blood and vanilla, like death... and dessert. Like...

Feathers and earth.

"Hello Malice." After a while, I did realize that he was talking to me. It had been a long time since I had been referred to as Sera, Angel. That's what Sera meant, after all, and I was far from being an angel. If anything, I suppose, I was Catastrophe and Sera was the angel, and I was fallen.

I had never told Ivan this, but that brief snatch of his mind I had gotten, the most interesting part of it, the weirdest, the most intriguing part, was the religion he knew. It was so different... It was...

"Why do you let idle thought consume you so? You are greater than that."

I hadn't a clue what he was talking about, or why even, he was talking to me about it. Or more over, what he was doing there with me. That was important, I supposed, like I was in the middle of a puzzle and he was quite a few pieces already connected, just waiting to let me in on what the whole puzzle looked like. I guess it was stupid to begin the metaphorical puzzle without looking at the box first, but I had never been one, metaphorically, to look before I leap, so to speak.

"Ooooh. My oh my. An unbroken mind? An unbroken peace? How... quaint." It was clear, however, just who the opposite had to be. He had to be talking about Ivan, in that case, and I was not Ivan, I was not near shattered...

Suddenly, I had a pang of worry about what Ivan was doing, and I felt the blood cling to the webs ever faster.

"What are you doing here?"

"Watching. Waiting. Biding."

That... Couldn't be correct. That wasn't... the same as the infernal devil that Ivan described, complained, whined, BITCHED about. Just watching? Yet I knew he was telling the truth. The web in my mind hardly vibrated with lies, only with truths, though I felt it hunger for flies.

"Why?"

"Because, my dear... You're very special. Imagine, the threads of fate so tightly wound across your group... And to me. Just... imagine the chances against you even living to have this conversation with me. You have with you a princess, a key to awakening Purge himself from his tomb, the key to awakening me from MY tomb... and you."

Princess and keys? That... didn't... Well... in a rather lewd ways, dicks could be keys, I guess. Man, I wasn't high enough or near drunk enough to deal with this puzzle shit. Not that I really got drunk anymore, and I was kicking the habit of the 'poppy' seeds I was taking, though super charged as they were, I could probably replace them with sunflower seeds.

At any rate... I had a feeling that both of the guys in the party were the keys, and it had nothing to do with their dicks at all, which meant I had no real clue what the hell the spider was talking about, as there was no way in hell that Boss was a princess in ANY reality.

Something flew down like a Haast's eagle, like some prehistoric bird from...

Ergh... This wasn't my memory... I had no idea what a Haast's eagle was, nor what it had anything to do with anything at all. Which was nothing. Like a goddamned candle, it had nothing to do with the task at hand and yet...

The wings were made of fire and it cast shadows in the sea of ichor, on the webs, burning them away from the blood like massive cables of fire.

"And me."

I could feel the world nod and the webs vibrate through their fire. "Of course. You're special too. You could hardly be so resistant to the healing magics that I had to nest in your head to heal you up if you weren't. Just imagine how much easier it would be if I didn't have to interfere, to do evil in the name of good... Just imagine a simpler world..." Malice almost seemed wistful, as if remember the simpler times.

"Me." I reminded helplessly, watching the bird; the eagle, the blood; the sea, the webs... the spider...

"You, my friend of my broken peace. You are very special. But you already know that. Your brother still lives, you know, and he is closer to harnessing the powers of the gods more than any mortal SHY of a few pieces, those pieces with unbroken peaces, these pieces WHO DARE harness... Terror... Valder... Your brother, he is so very close... But you..."

"Me..." I muttered, wondering when the hell this was going to be over. What was this, poetry hour or something?"

"You... One day you will understand... but my time here grows short... Just remember..."

Something lashed out from the pool of blood still slowly wrapping around the webs. A sharp blade wielded by the eagle, wielded by the blood itself, snapped through one of the webs, sending the presence of the spider scurrying away. "Just remember..."

"Remember... What?"

There was a loud SNAP! A crack, a falling.

"Phaserend."

The world of blood and webs and feathers and death suddenly flashed a dark azure, then a light rose in color, thousands of gems floating about in the air like some form of Hearth's warming gift that a unicorn made, power crackling through it all.

I felt myself move; I felt myself stir. "...Phase...Rend..."

The world snapped into perspective.