Elesh Norn smiled. She basked in the golden sunlight, turning her magnificent face this way and that to catch its beautiful rays. Even after all of this time, she still loved to revel in how how different this plane was to New Phyrexia. Only one sun, and rather than being an unparalleled source of mana, it was illumination for its own glorious sake. And while it was nominally under the stewardship of a single being, it could not be used against any one enemy without also destroying all the rest of the world. It could only ever be used for a purpose of unity.
"And they think themselves so different from us," she mused. She looked down at herself, and grinned. The fascinating... restrictions of this plane only served to underscore the futility of the ponies' struggle, as the invaders were twisted into shapes resembling the invaded. Where once she had stood tall above many of her soldiers, a gaunt figure with slender arms ending in long, claw-like fingers, now she was scarcely a foot above her beloved brutes. Instead of arms, she had been given hooves and a seemingly-effortless telekinesis power.
The idea of alien biology providing a clear advantage over the compleat form was nothing new to Elesh Norn, or indeed to the Phyrexian ideal as a whole. Everything had to start somewhere, and as there were infinite worlds, there were obviously infinite chances for one of them to develop something better than the current model of Phyrexian. Mirrodin had given them darksteel, it was only right for Ungula to give them widespread telekinesis.
Any further philosophical musings were cut off as a bright light began to arc across the sky. The Grand Cenobite did the eyeless equivalent of narrowing her eyes and squinting, trying to deduce what she was seeing. It was like a comet, except that its contrail was solid light, it had clearly sprung up from the earth, and it was travelling directly towards Norn's outpost.
Norn looked around herself, checking that the torpor orbs were still buzzing. She knew these Ungulans well enough; they wouldn't launch a spell over such a distance, certainly not with a travel path like that. They were sending a force, a physical attacker.
She hoped this one would last longer.
It was a point of pride for Norn that she did not need to tell her clerics to get out of the way once it became clear where the creature would be landing. They scurried to evacuate, leaving a clear place just in front of the Grand Cenobite for their new guest to land. Norn passed the next few seconds wondering if the creature would make the mistake of going out of their way and crushing one of the clerics underhoof regardless. As the old Phyrexian saying went, oil spread, enemy dead. Oil pour, foe no more.
No such luck. The enemy arrived with a thunderclap and a flash of dark and light, for they had been moving so fast that both sound and light had been left by the wayside and had to fill a lot of space in very little time. The platform buckled beneath the new arrival, and Norn did her best not to lick her lips in anticipation as the little droplets of oil began to slowly trickle down the incline towards the hooves of her attacker. Her victory was assured now, it was just a matter of staying alive long enough to see it.
"Greetings, equine." Norn put on her best smile, which was really a shame because her guest was so tall that they probably couldn't see her mouth moving. "For what purpose have you come here?"
Had she not had good reason to expect an attack, Norn might have foregone such pleasantries in favor of salivating at the sight before her. The pony was tall, almost unbelievably so, and with the muscles to match. Her coat gleamed and shone like the Ungulan sun itself, and it sparkled with fresh droplets of all-too-clear sweat. She had a magnificent horn that seemed to pierce the sky with the distortion of mana - white mana - around it, but she also bore a breathtaking set of wings that were flared out as proudly as Norn had ever seen any pegasus wear them. The pony's entire form was encircled by leaves and vines of sparkling metal, and all the spirals and whorls inevitably drew one's gaze to her eyes, those deep violet pits of fury.
"I have come to put an end to darkness."
Norn smiled, and made a big show of cocking her head to one side so that the pony could see she was making an effort. "Well, seems there's been a bit of confusion. Last I heard, Sheoldred was occupying the south."
The look of unmistakable disdain on the pony's face briefly disappeared, replaced by genuine appreciation. "Oh, thank you. We were wondering where that contemptible spider had holed up." Her smile was gone as quickly as it had come, though, and she was back to growling. "But no, I was in fact referring to you."
"To me? Surely you jest! The Machine Orthodoxy preaches a message of glorious perfection and unification! We seek the same ends as your people, simply by different means."
"I heard that spiel the first time. Twilight was good enough to pass it along. I'll thank you not to further pollute my philosophy with comparisons to yours."
As the pony was speaking, Norn did her best to conceal a sigh. There was only so long that even she could prattle on about the various undeniable merits of following every letter of the Argent Etchings. She glared down at the ground, expecting to see the glistening oil pooling at the pony's hooves by this point. To her surprise, not only had the oil not yet reached the pony, the droplets were flowing backwards, away from the pony's hooves. Norn couldn't feel a single glimmer of pony magic around the oil, and felt her marrow bristle at the sight.
"Who are you, that you would come before the Grand Cenobite of the Machine Orthodoxy and show such open defiance of New Phyrexia?"
The pony straightened up, and the glow of her magic encircled all within her sight. "I am Celestia."
Norn ground her teeth, and her right hoof bristled as she readied an attack. "I have heard that name. I have heard it screamed in the moments before your foolish ponies finally joined us. They speak of you as though you were a god, yet I do not feel any great power in you."
"Probably because I'm making an effort not to show it," Celestia suggested, grinning with unrestrained confidence.
"So you think yourself a god, then?" As the words passed her lips, Norn unleashed shards of marrow directly into Celestia's face, an attack mirrored by her swarm of clerics. The air around Celestia suddenly became a storm of razor-sharp metal and bone, and Norn waited for the sudden explosion of viscera.
After about five seconds of waiting, Norn realized that the shards weren't moving. They were glowing bright, and hanging motionless. From within the storm of shards, Celestia spoke.
"I have never thought of myself as anything more than an exceptionally gifted pony." The marrow crumbled to dust, and the clerics followed suit. Within seconds, the only creatures left alive on the platform were Elesh Norn and Princess Celestia. "The closest I ever come to godhood is when I kill gods."
It was probably the second worst time in all the histories of the Multiverse to have a god complex.