Lilium gasped for breath. The air as fetid and thin, reeking of strange gasses and stranger rot that were impossible to recognize. All around her was a forest. It was not like the Everfree, though. These trees had grown without sun, and yet somehow stood much taller. Their gnarled black trunks reached upward toward the sky- -except there was no sky. Through their needles, Lilium was able to see only darkness, and on the other side of it more trees growing from land above.

“Where are we?” she cried, turning suddenly toward Morgana.

Morgana’s jaundiced eyes reflected what little rotting light could be found in this strange place. “Nowhere,” she said. She looked up at the trees. “This is good.”

“Good? How is this possibly good?!”

“You can’t interpret the world as pure code like I can. You’re forcing her actions into a visual metaphor. It might slower her down, if only somewhat.”

“Not likely.”

The voice spoke from everywhere at once. In fact, Lilium was sure she had not even really heard it. Somehow she had simply understood it regardless.

A shadow rose from the decaying litter of the forest floor. Nothing was casting it, nor was it cast upon anything. It was simply black- -until it opened its eyes. A pair of blinding white circles erupted on the top of the shadow, causing Lilium to recoil not from the light but from the torrents of data that lurked behind them.

“A technomancer. And a good one. Is that why you thought you could challenge me?”

“We’re not trying to challenge you!” exclaimed Lilium. “We just want to talk!”

The glowing eyes did not shift, but Lilium felt them suddenly direct their full attention on her. Suddenly the trees that lined the infinite multi-plane screamed in agony. They twisted, theirmouths tearing open to reveal teeth and blood. Limbs and roots shot forward toward Lilium. Her horn ignited and she cast a shield spell to protect herself, but it did nothing. The plants shattered it with ease.

Morgana moved quickly, if not instantly. She interposed herself between Lilium and the will of the War Stone. Her horn did not glow, but her body ignited with what Lilium perceived as light: spirals and plates of mathematics swirling around her person, sending out beams that struck the oncoming wood and the trees that sent it. Every tree that was impacted changed again, twisting and straightening. The afflicted trees dropped their branches and grew upward until they had become vast and limbless pillars.

“MOVE.”

Lilium did not have a choice. She felt herself moving, or at least perceived her location changing. Suddenly she was somewhere different: her and Morgana were still in the same forest, but now in an area with different trees.

“I don’t have time to repeat myself you goddamn idiot, RUN!”

Lilium was taken aback by the insult, but saw the fear on Morgana’s face. She did as she was told, and the pair of them started to sprint. Something seemed to be pushing them, and Lilium suddenly found herself rushing through the forest at a speed far faster than any pony should have been able to move.

Speed was not enough to escape the War Stone, however. The eyes began to follow them. Lilium saw them to her right, a pair of luminescent orbs just beyond the trees. They were keeping pace without expending any effort, never drawing closer or passing.

“I remember you,” they said. “Yes…such an old memory. From when I was still mortal.”

“I know,” said Morgana. “You were an asshole then, and you’re an asshole now!”

“I don’t really care terribly much.”

Suddenly the trees seemed to disintegrate. Howling darkness poured in from all angles. Lilium closed her eyes in fear, but she still felt the air around them depart and be replaced by a pure swirling vortex of force. It was like wind, but rather than just buffeting her it tore at every atom of her being. Both she and Morgana were lifted in the air, or at the very least the ground departed from them.

“Morgana, help!”

Morgana did not answer. Instead, her body seemed to lose its boundaries for a moment. Something within her spread outward, and Lilium became conscious of algorithms moving past her, counteracting the sequence that had been inflicted upon them. Suddenly the force around them vanished, replaced by a hollow brick tower with a winding staircase that seemed to lead up and down eternally into pure and terrible darkness.

Lilium screamed as she started to plummet, but Morgana grabbed her hoof. As she did, Morgana’s back sprouted a pair of long violet wings. The falling slowed as she flexed them, flapping in the airless atmosphere.

“You’re- -you’re an alicorn!”

“No. I use wings when they suit me.”

“But how?”

“The metaphor is inconsequential. It’s the underlying aspects that matter. I do not have wings, and yet I can fly with them because they are unnecessary.”

Suddenly, the area around them shifted again. The stairs that lined the infinite tower morphed, switching from loose stone steps to deadly spikes. Lilium screamed and closed her eyes, but Morgana reacted almost instantly. The tube collapsed from a cylinder into a two-dimensional circle. The spikes crossed just below Lilium’s rear hooves, which she had barely retracted in time. Then Morgana dropped her onto the now solid circle below her.

“Goddamn it, this is annoying.”

“Tell me about it!’

“She’s toying with us.”

“Wait- -what? THIS is toying?!”

“I can’t get close enough! She’s blocking me!”

“Wait…” It was at that moment that Lilium realized what was actually happening. Her perception of the world around her was vastly inadequate. What she saw as attacks were in actuality just collateral, half-hearted blows. To the War Stone, Lilium was in consequential. Her interest was instead on Morgana, who was engaged in a battle that Lilium could not see nor ever hope to understand.

“I can’t see what you’re doing!”

“Trust me. You wouldn’t want to.” Morgana closed her eyes and gripped the muddy ground with her hooves… “Brace yourself!”

Something struck. To Lilium, it manifested as an excruciating wave of nausea. Her whole body felt as though it were being torn apart, and she suddenly bent forward and vomited, spewing her silver unicorn blood out of her mouth and onto the ground below. It had not even been a direct attack, or an attack at all. It had simply been the War Stones will changing the metaphor. She had grown bored with the last one.

Shaking, Lilium looked up. When she saw the world before her, all hope left her. She quailed and collapsed to her knees as tears ran down her face. All around her was death and destruction, to magnitude that no pony- -nor any mortal being- -was meant to see. The land was blasted and destroyed: all soil had been lost, and nothing grew. The only trees that remained looked like those of the last realm, but their charred bodies were shattered and broken. All that remained was rock and rivers of blood that ran from endless corpses. The soil was as much stone as it was bodies: some decayed completely to bone, other rotting in the light of the dim red sun overhead. There were ponies mingled with humans, and things damaged so badly that Lilium had no idea what they had once been.

Lilium and Morgana were not alone. Others walked this battlefield. There were thousands of them. What they were, Lilium could not tell. They were dead, like the others, or perhaps made from them. Their bodies were alight with dark magic, and their forms clad and nailed into hideous armor. They stared with empty eyes, but Lilium felt herself being watched. Some of them still had a distant glimmer of consciousness, the remnant of what they had been in life. The vast majority, though, were empty but not illusions. From their eyes came a light that was not alive: they were created and animated purely by the will of the War Stone.

Why Lilium was forced to see this she did not know. She thought that perhaps it was because she could perceive more of the truth of the battle between the War Stone and Morgana, and that her perception had rendered the world into something closer to the truth. It could also have been that this was how the War Stone perceived the world: a dark battlefield where she stood immortal against an endless onslaught of enemies.

Lilium did not have time to think, though. In the distance, she saw something stir. A figure moved through the red mist and dark fog of the realm, and Lilium’s eyes and mind reeled. The creatures that wandered this hellscape were of many sizes, and some stood as high as buildings. This figure, though, towered over all of them; a being of impossible vastness, looming over all: a dark parody of a knight, clad in a robe over demonic armor and a mask of a twisted human skull. In her hands, she held a sword of impossible size, but rather than wield it she stabbed the tip of it several miles into the ground and rested her clawed hands on the pommel. Lilium understood.

“That…that’s her,” she whispered. “We…we can’t fight that…”

Morgana did not answer. Instead, she stepped past Lilium. Lilium gasped; whereas before Morgana had been nude save for her necklace, she now wore a suit of black armor. The stone gleamed in the center of it, where it had been inlaid against Morgana’s chest. Morgana’s expression was grim, and she did not look at Lilium. Instead, she surveyed the horizon.

There was a long pause before the unthinkable happened: Morgana burst out laughing.

“JOSEPHINE!” she screamed, her voice echoing off the rocks and remains of vast tanks that had embedded themselves in the endless plane. “I know you can hear me! What is this? Is this supposed to SCARE me?” Her expression darkened, and she bared her teeth. Lilium could see that just like in the real world, her rear teeth were all viciously pointed. “Are you a goddamn CHILD?! You’ve never set foot on a battlefield in your life! This fantasy bullshit is NOTHING compared to that. Now are you going to keep wasting my time, or are you going to come down here and FIGHT!”

The enormous figure in the distance stared down at them. Then she raised one of her hands from her sword and pointed. An army millions strong began racing forward at her will, clamoring over the remains of what they had once been.

“You will die, then, if that is what you want.” Her voice was deafening and booming, like distant thunder- -yet Lilium was sure that she had heard something in it, a tone apart from its severe annoyance.

Morgana grinned. “Come on! Do it! FIGHT ME! You won’t win- -I’m not going to let myself be killed by a GODDAMN FILTHY HUMAN!”

A loud roar poured over the field, and Lilium covered her ears. The War Stone now attacked in earnest: the horde of monstrosities rushed forward toward their two opponents. Morgana did not hesitate. In a flash, she shot forward. The first of the attackers were torn apart from within, and those behind them returned fire. Morgana blocked, and attacked again.

The battle turned quickly. There were simply too many of them. Lilium could feel it: every second that passed left Morgana more and more injured, and weaker. She was dying. There was no way for her to win this fight; she was miniscule in comparison to the oncoming force. This was exactly what she had hoped to avoid: no living thing could survive a head-on fight with the War Stone, even for a matter of seconds.

Morgana flashed back to Lilium, and suddenly Lilium felt time slow around them. The monstrosities that were approaching seemed to come slower, their rusted weapons and heavy cannons moving at a glacial pace whereas moments before they had been faster than Lilium could perceive.

The slowing of time appeared to be putting a massive strain on Morgana. Still, she turned to Lilium. “I’m losing,” she said. “This all went bad, I still can’t get close enough to her. I have to do something really stupid that I REALLY didn’t want to, but I need my full concentration if I’m going to have any hope of pulling it off.”

“But the enemies- -”

“I need you to hold them off!”

“I- -I don’t know how to do that! My magic is useless here!”

“Of course it is, you idiot! Project a firewall! Let enough go through that we stay connected and don’t schism to death but keep the foreign programs out!”

“I have no idea how to do that!”

Morgana grimaced and put her hoof on Lilium’s head. Lilium cried out in pain, but suddenly understood what she had meant. It all seemed so simple.

“There! Now you know!”

“But I still don’t think I can do it! That spell is really hard!”

“You’re a Twilight Sparkle! Figure it out!”

One of the creatures lunged forward. Lilium cried out and covered her face with her front legs. As she did, her mind instinctively reacted. In a way, it had been waiting to for some time. Morgana had simply given it a mechanism to act.

The firewall activated. Although Lilium could raise it, she could not interpret it in the same way that Morgana could; as such, it rendered within her conception of the metaphor. The spell appeared as a shield around her and Morgana, a pink-violet bubble etched with swirling runes. The asymmetrical corpse-beast slammed its sword into the field, but the blade rebounded from it with a hiss.

This only seemed to anger the horde. They swarmed inward, pouring over the shield. Lilium looked up to see them staring through, attacking viciously with claws, swords, teeth and bullets. Every impact was a strain; the mathematics and instantaneous decisions required to balance the sheild were unbelievably taxing. Still, Lilium understood what needed to be done, and she knew the math behind it. She held the shield.

“Hurry!” she said, dropping to her knees as the creatures slammed harder and harder into the surface.

“I’m going as fast as I can,” muttered Morgana. “Just hold the shield!”

Suddenly one of the creatures struck the shield with something that Lilium did not recognize. In the metaphor, it resembled a whip, or perhaps a fetid, rotting tentacles. In the code, though, it moved too quickly for Lilium to determine its true identity or intent. She slipped up. The code had been too well disguised, and it had looked like a normal network transmission. The appendage broke through her shield, penetrating it. Immediately it began to change, growing and crystalizing into a network of sharp black needles.

“They’re getting through! Morgana, HURRY!”

Morgana did not answer. Lilium felt her heart sink, but it only fell further when the red clouds of the sky above were blotted out by a shadow. She looked up to see what she already knew was there: standing over her was the avatar of the War Stone herself.

The War Stone lifted her sword with ease, bringing it over the shield. Lilium looked up at it: a blade as wide as a small city, the point of which was directly over her, rising higher and higher as the War Stone prepared to strike.

“I can’t block that,” she said. Then, turning toward Morgana, she screamed. “I CAN’T BLOCK THAT!”

The sword was now miles overhead, and it came crashing down in an instant. Lilium braced herself. The dark needles of the infecting program had almost reached her, and her shield was cracking from the attacks by the creatures that surrounded her. None of it mattered, though. When the sword struck, the shield would be broken in an instant. There was nothing that could survive a blow like that.

Suddenly Morgana looked up. “Done!” she cried.

Across the battlefield, a light erupted. It was clean and clear, and Lilium understood what it was instantly: an escape.

The distance between them and the War Stone’s avatar suddenly increased. Morgana had moved them out of range. A roar came from behind. It was not truly a voice, but rather a thought created with such incredibly force that its meaning could be understood by proximity alone.

“She’s opened a portal!” screamed the War Stone. “Surround it! All forces SURROUND IT! Don’t let her escape me!”

The motion was instantaneous. More soldiers arose from the ashes of battle. Amalgams of broken machinery and human remains formed from the wastes, rushing forward toward the beautiful light. They surrounded it, preparing to defend it. Despite this, Morgana and Lilium continued to approach rapidly.

Then, suddenly, the stopped. Lilium stared into the mind-boggling horde between the pair of ponies and the way out of this realm, back to safety. The situation was grim, but the glow of the light gave her hope. The battle had been lost. Morgana had not been able to succeed in her task, but Lilium accepted this. They would return home and find another way.

Yet Morgana did not attack. She turned to Lilium, and a thin smile crossed her face.

“Now for the interesting part,” she whispered.

Suddenly, Morgana was flung backward at incredible speed. Lilium screamed wordlessly; she was dragged too. The light of the exit portal faded into the distance; they were moving away from it.

“Morgana!” cried Lilium. “What are you doing?!”

Morgana did not answer. Her body began to fade, or to change. The code around her was different, but Lilium did nothave a metaphor for how.

Then she looked up, and became aware of the full extent of Morgana’s madness. They were not just flying away from their one and only hope for escape; they were flying toward the War Stone’s avatar.

Before Lilium could protest, they struck. Lilium braced herself, expecting to be dashed against the impossibly thick armor. Instead, though, she felt Morgana’s code surround her, and what should have been metal was instead rendered as something more akin to a thick fluid.

“What are you doing?!” cried the War Stone. “You can’t- -you fool! You could have escaped! Why are you- -I’ll kill you! I’LL GODDAMN KILL YOU ALL!!”

The world around them went black as they sunk into the void, and the feeling of crossing through thick fluid faded. Lilium understood now. In her haste to protect the exit, the War Stone had left her true self less defended. Morgana had been able to attack her directly, and to penetrate her armor and her armies. Lilium could now feel the rage that surrounded her; it was deafening. Yet, at the same time, she heard something else. It was weak and distant, but the closest think that Lilium could relate it to was fear. For the first time, the War Stone was afraid.