The machines activated, and Thebe felt herself slip back into consciousness as the magic that maintained her temporary forced dormancy faded. Her conscious mind rapidly surged back to her, and she once again became conscious of her body.

Alicorns did not need sleep. Thebe was no exception. What she had been doing was no what any sane pony would consider true “sleep”. Such torment was beyond her capacity- -instead, she had magically suppressed her vital signs for long enough for her body to regenerate from the injuries it incurred from simple existence.

She moved slowly through the gelatinous, translucent substance that contained her and passed through the membranous magic that enclosed the tank. She suspended herself with magic and felt as the tubes that connected to her containment suit unlatched from her body, retracting like snakes back into the support gel.

Thebe slowly lowered herself to the floor. She felt air rush through the filters in her containment suit. Strictly speaking, nothing about the external air was toxic- -nor was it impossible for her to simply purify all the air in her facility. Removing all smells was simply another part of the sensory deprivation that her suit allowed. She saw, or heard, only when she needed to. Keeping herself blind and isolated allowed her to focus the proper amount of energy inward.

As was customary upon reactivation from a cycle, she ran a diagnostic check on her containment suit. All features were normal, as they always had been. In fact, checking it was completely unnecessary: like all aspects of her life, the suit was simply an extension of her magic, rather than an independent item. It was as much a part of her as the hairless alicorn skin beneath it. She would be able to know when something was wrong.

Her magic wrapped itself around her, materializing into an amorphous fluid that aligned itself into a kind of garment. All around her, spheres of scarlet magic erupted in the air, and ten Draconian data cubes appeared. Each one began to project a cubic readout, filling the air around them with an alphabet of Thebe’s own design. The data contained poured from the cubes, entering her mind through her three horns, updating her on the condition of her experiments, research, and Equestria at large.

The entire process took nearly a minute. During dormancy cycles, Thebe normally put the spells that she used for research into a preprogramed state. As of recent, however, she had not bothered- -somehow, even with her mind forced to shut down, some part of her persisted that was able to ensure that everything ran smoothly.

As for Equestria, she hardly paid any attention. The internal events of the kingdom were managed by her puppet governments and corporate fronts- -most of them not even knowing that they were under her control. She was more concerned with updates with the current situation involving the ongoing war with Vale, even though the state of that particular grievance had not truly changed in nearly a century.

She closed the cubes and sent them back to where they had been. She then lifted herself with magic. The room shifted as she effortlessly moved to a new location. Her facility was built for her, and her alone; it had no doors, windows, or halls, except when she chose to summon them. Instead, she simply teleported between chambers.

In theory, she did not need to wander amongst her experiments and research- -she was already coincident of everything that was happening- -but she took some degree of pride in what she had managed to accomplish. Years, centuries, or even millennia of work came together under her guidance, by her will- -but so much remained unknown. She had long ago established the ability to resurrect the dead, but that alone had not been enough. She had promptly invented a counterspell to slay the living- -and currently invested some of her effort on further increasing the range of effect. Already, she was able to control life and death of any of her subjects- -even if she chose not to most of the time.

Necromancy was only one of the magics that she studied. Telepathy, mind control, conjuring, transformation of metals, and spells of unimaginable destructive potential- -she enjoyed them all so much. At the moment, however, she was still being stymied by the forms of magic that the “greats” of ages past had thought impossible: those that would enable precognition and omnipotence. She had made some degree of headway, but the tools necessary to accomplish them were still just outside of her reach.

She floated through the room, examining the spells and their readouts as their overlay architecture continually rewrote itself, or as it poured through artifacts and ancient tomes that she had managed to recover in her long life. She did not bother walking- -she hardly ever bothered to use her legs- -and was not truly flying. In fact, her wings were sealed against her back inside her suit. With adequate magic, the use of wings for flight was simply redundant.

One of the experiments seemed to intrigue her, and she stretched out her magic. A number of translucent geometric shapes formed a manipulator, an arm of sorts, and she reached into a chamber where precision-carved pieces of stone were moving, linked by a viscous red material. She pinched the red semi-fluid and removed a piece, watching as the amoeboid creature squirmed in her grasp. It was part of a far more practical form of magic; she had spent several months reverse-engineering Luna’s Tantabus, attempting to use it to create ephemerality spells that could be used for a new generation of golems. Ephemerality, though tactically useful, was surprisingly difficult to accomplish, especially for a synthetic life form intended to operate semi-independently from its operator.

As she set it back, something suddenly came to her attention. She was detecting a life within her perimeter that was not her. For a moment, she wondered if the gray unicorn frozen in enchanted frost that she kept several levels below had finally awoken- -but as she localized the disturbance, she saw that it was coming from somepony approaching from the outside.

Thebe dismissed this, at least at first. The security spells she used to ensure her isolation were strong enough to tear a planet in half- -even the Incurse armada had not been able to penetrate the defenses of her Pyramid. As she continued to watch, however, she realized that it was moving relatively unhindered, forming halls as it moved. Beneath her pony-faced mask, she frowned, because she recognized the magical signature.

Once again she shifted, moving through space and time, ignoring the physics that so many lesser-minded mages had considered to be a real. As she left one chamber, she appeared in another, one that formed a great and empty corridor, something like a parody of the long-abandoned grand halls that still adorned the forgotten and decaying palace in Canterlot.

Slowly, Thebe floated to the edge, and watched as the familiar figure she had felt descended from a chamber above, landing on the stonelike floor below and retracting his vast, leathery wings through the slits in his cloak.

He stood substantially taller than Thebe, standing on two legs, his arms at his sides. Although he was far taller than Thebe, Thebe floated at eye level. Even doing so, she could not see well into the darkness of his hood- -aside from the glint of a single golden eye.

“Grand Magus,” said Thebe, her voice not coming from her body but from everything that surrounded them.

“Thebe,” growled the Grand Magus from beneath his hood. Thebe could nearly feel his eyes burning into her. Not that he was actually any real threat- -his power was far beyond that of any pony who had ever lived, but hers was most likely greater. “Still wearing that ridiculous mask, I see.”

“Would you ask me to remove it, Magus?”

“Would you even survive without it?”

“Yes. The question is not would I survive, but what would become of you.” She paused for a moment, getting used to the feeling of speaking. Even if she was not using her mouth, this was the first time she had spoken to anypony in several decades. “Tell me, Grand Magus,” she asked. “Why have you come here?”

“I think you already know,” he said. “Or have you stopped bothering with the outside world entirely?”

“Many things happen. I am aware of many, but not all.”

“Something is happening, Thebe. Surely you have noticed.”

“Be more specific.”

The Grand Magus sighed. “The Rotali just left Equestria. Not all of them, but most of them.”

“They are not my prisoners. They are free to return to the Beyond whenever they please.”

“They were escaping, Thebe. Do you even care what they were running from?”

“No.”

“And the changelings? Nine tenths of their population was destroyed!”

“I have distributed the necessary royal jelly to generate a new set of queens,” said Thebe. “No further action is required. Their civilization will rebuilt shortly. Perahps in less than seven centuries.”

“You arrogant fool!” cried the Grand Magus, suddenly slamming his clawed fist into one of the walls. It cracked, but as he took it away the wall automatically repaired itself. He sighed, calming himself. “Do you even care what caused that damage?”

“I admit I am curious, but not curious enough to dedicate resources toward the investigation.”

“Well, I am. And do you know what I found?”

Thebe only stared, knowing full well that the Grand Magus would keep babbling even if she went back into dormancy.

“Nothing,” he said, raising his claws to the ceiling in a grand shrug. “Nothing at all. Whatever did it was powerful enough to take on the entire changeling fiefdom without taking a scratch- -and not even the best of the Draconians can find a trace.”

That intrigued Thebe more than his previous blathering. She had been aware of the Rotali launch, as well as the destruction of the changelings- -and she had also been distantly aware that her own orbital satellites had not detected anything out of the ordinary, as if whatever had caused the destruction were completely invisible.

“And you propose that the Rotali exodus is linked to the destruction of the changelings? On what grounds?”

“It isn’t just the Rotali. Your precious Incurse have been leaving as well. Surely you have noticed the disappearances- -and if you haven’t, ponies will soon.”

That was slightly more disturbing, but only marginally so. The Rotali were simple colonizers, as were their associated Beyonder races- -but the Incurse of Equestria were refugees. They could not simply return to the Beyond, at least not without putting themselves in great peril.

“And you came all this way to offer your insights?” sighed Thebe, becoming increasingly annoyed at the Grand Magus’s presence. Her day had been carefully scripted according to the great number of tasks she had to attend to, and he was consuming time rapidly, forcing her to juggle the schedule in her head, accommodating for the intrusion on her life.

“I came to ask for your help,” he said. “Whatever this is, it is a threat to all Equestria. Surely you must realize that.”

“Denied,” said Thebe flatly.

“What?” sputtered the Grand Magus. “But the threat- -”

“Is not my concern,” said Thebe, turning around and proceeding to float back down the hallway. “The ponies who inhabit my world will handle it. Or not. Perhaps it will destroy civilization for a few centuries, if it is as dangerous as you expect. Or millennia.”

“You would let the world be destroyed for thousands of years?”

“You are stuck thinking like a pony. A thousand years is an insignificant blink to us. It does not actually matter.”

“And you would let those ponies suffer, Thebe?”

“If they choose to. They are not my concern.”

“You are their leader!”

“No. I am their god.” She turned back to the Grand Magus. “Do as you will. I will not stop you. But at the moment, what you are suggesting is not interesting to me.” She turned away once again, and contemplated where she was going to go next.

“How can you be so cruel, Thebe?”

“Cruel?” she laughed slightly. “This is not cruelty. Not at all.”

“Even if billions die?”

“No. Not in my opinion.”

The Grand Magus followed her, his lower claws clicking across the floor. “How did you become like this, Thebe?”

“I have never been any other way.”

“You were. I once loved you, Thebe.”

“Love,” she said. “Such an outdated concept. Look what your so-called ‘Love’ did to Cadence. Look what your ‘Friendship’ did to Twilight. The very things that they valued tore them apart. I will not make the same mistakes.”

“Then it is you who are the fool,” he said softly, throwing an object toward Thebe. She caught it in her magic, and saw that it was a common data storage spike.

“What is this?” she asked as the Grand Magus turned away and extended his wings.

“It is what the Eye saw. Because I know you well, Thebe. You may not care about Equestria, but you are curious. So perhaps this trip was not a complete waste.”

“Go back to you mountaintop, dragon,” said Thebe. “And if you return here unannounced again, I will kill you.”

“Good luck with that,” said the Grand Magus as he took flight, leaving Thebe once again alone.

She watched him go, and then shifted to a different chamber, one of the many that had nothing in it. Being around the Grand Magus made her feel strange, as though she had been rolling in something foul. Of all the creatures alive, there were only two that she truly hated: him, and Vale.

Still, she was curious about what the Grand Magus was so concerned about- -and, admittedly, she wondered what kind of creature had the capacity to destroy one of her sub-kingdoms and then simply disappear. So the encased the drive in her magic and read it.

All that was on it was an image- -explaining why the Grand Magus had not bothered to use an entire data cube. The picture was distorted, as though it were taken through some kind of obscure and unfashionable camera lense. Thebe imagined that the way that image was displayed was how his artificial eye- -a relic from a long-dead civilization, pulled from a being blessed by the Madgod Thoghth- -actually saw the world.

In it, Thebe saw a tall figure walking amongst the swirling wreckage and flame of some unseen locale. Although the image was distorted, one aspect of the figure was clear: its glowing white eyes. It momentarily seemed to stop moving and peer into the camera- -as if it somehow knew that it was being watched. Then it continued onward.

Something deep within the unfathomable workings of Thebe’s mind seemed to suddenly ignite. It was a memory, one so distant that it was unclear, perhaps so far back that it even predated her life as an alicorn. Somehow, she felt that she had seen creatures like that one before.