The heart-shaped crystal began to revolve slowly in the center of the device. A clear, sharp sound pierced the air as it began to revolve more quickly, a single, exquisite note. Beneath her mask, Thebe smiled. The sound meant that her device was now operational. She knew what the sound actually was, of course. It was oscillation caused from the Crystal Heart attempting to reject her housing. The Heart itself, though long dead, retained some semblance of the transcendent sentience that had belonged to its original owner. The sound was its screaming.

Thebe floated backward, landing on an auxiliary platform that she summoned to her position. Though blind, she admired her work: a new device, modeled after the crystal palace but augmented with modern technology and components of magic so powerful that Sombra and Mi’Amore Cadenza would scarcely be able to comprehend them. This creation machine of crystal and golden steel built to house the still-living heart of a Lord of Order, a modern incarnation of the legendary Numidium.

The design, of course, was a vast improvement over the original design used in the first Crystal Palace, or the second one that Thebe had taken it from. In both of those cases, it had been intended to accumulate and amplify an emotional state: in Sombra’s case, it had been fear; in Cadenza’s, it was love and harmony. Thebe, however, knew that both emotional states were lies. Fear was a pointless anachronism, and love nothing more than a lie.

Instead, she had designed her transmitter properly, partially basing it off the smaller Hearts of Order that the vandrares used in their own chests. Now instead of transmitting, it would accumulate magic and dump it into a single pony.

The design went deeper than even that, though. Thebe was aware of secrets that no pony knew. Deep within the remains of the long-ruined Finality Core, she had found the mad scrawling of Arcane Domination, the greatest trihorn mage ever to live, written shortly before his death- -or long after. Deciphering them had taken years, but Thebe still recalled the brief spark of joy she had felt when she understood what they were: partial schematics for the Weapon, the ancient device that had simultaneously exterminated the trihorns, Draconians, and removed the Heart of Order from its original owner so long ago. With that understanding, she could improve the function of the device exponentially.

The only remaining step was to integrate her body into the network, to permanently fuse herself into the matrix. This gave her pause, not because the process was likely irreversible, or because she knew that it would be the most painful thing she had ever experienced- -as an immortal goddess, she cared little for such trivialities- -but because for the first time in almost three hundred years she was not sure what would happen. The Crystal Heart was a relic of exorbitant power, and one of few devices that could be used to create an alicorn. Connecting it to a being who was already an alicorn created a certain level of uncertainty.

A data cube floated into Thebe’s proximity, and she accessed it, reviewing the notes of her work and creating a prioritized list of what she would need to do in the testing phase. Activating it all at once would be dangerous, even to her. Starting with one or two cities would probably be safer.

The platform disconnected from the wall, hovering by Thebe’s magic, drawing her closer to the machine and to the slowly revolving Heart of Order and to her new body. Her insides quivered at the thought of how good the pain would feel, at the thought of becoming even more powerful.

Then she stopped. Something had entered the proximity of her Pyramid.

“No,” she said, her actual voice rasping on the inside of her mask. It hurt to talk- -but she could not help herself. The presence was surprisingly powerful, far larger than any pony, but more importantly, it was familiar- -and impossible.

The wind swirled through the desert, carrying dust from the radioactive sand across the ground and through the long-hardened dunes. In the distance, the ancient towers stood like sentinels, their steel bodies incorruptible even through countless ages, looming higher and stronger than any pony structure over the desert that was all that remained of the city that had once belonged to over one thousand millennia ago.

It was through this frigid waste that Shining Armor passed. Not much had changed since he had last walked these sands. Back then, he had been a young stallion standing at the side of the Blackest Night and D27. In the intervening centuries, the city had not changed physically, but magically, it could not have been more different.
` This realm had once been protected by innumerable defensive spells created by Celestia herself- -which Shining Armor now knew had been to hide her shame at how she had achieved her powers, and what cost Equestria had nearly been forced to pay for her arrogance- -but now there were few. In Celestia’s absence, nopony had bothered to repair the spells. Many had been taken down, crushed by some overbearing force. The few that remained were easy for Shining Armor to disarm, if they even reacted to him at all. They were intended to defend against ponies, and Shining Armor had not been able to include himself amongst that group for a long time indeed. The spells did not know how to react to the undead.

The one spell, however, that remained intact was the one that hid this realm from Equestria, keeping it separate from all other things. It was impossible to find unless somepony had already been there. Of course, the piles of weathered skeletons around the edge spoke otherwise; some ponies had apparently managed to find this lost city accidentally. The radiation had taken care of them. Lethal doses of radiation, of course, were inconsequential to a lich.

The teleport had gotten him reasonably close to the crater in the center, and Shining Armor looked into the vast hole for a moment, contemplating the horror had arisen from the machine that had once dwelt hidden beneath this nameless post-nuclear city. He momentarily watched the heavy dust that could lift itself no higher than his ankles fall into the pit, vanishing into the darkness below. Then he looked upward to the sky.

There, hovering by suspended magic, was an immense blue-green pyramid. The scale of it was almost incomprehensible; it was the size of an entire mountain, its facets all perfectly carved from some manner of dull, opaque material. Protruding from the bottom were a number of complex golden machines that hummed with energy, suspending it tens of miles in the atmosphere where it slowly revolved.

Shining Armor could feel the resignation from that pyramid in his synthetic body. The force holding it aloft was something other than magic, a kind of engineering that had been long-forgotten by ponykind before they had even learned to speak- -but within, he could feel an occupant. The pyramid itself contained the signal, but he felt something terrible within.

That was not all he felt. His eyes narrowed when he realized that one of the signals within felt familiar. Whoever was inside that pyramid was in possession of the Crystal Heart- -his Crystal Heart. Until that moment, he had been unsure about the nature of this so-called Thebe. Now he knew that she had to die.

Space distorted slightly, and Shining Armor felt the magical surge of a teleportation spell- -or something similar to one. The air almost immediately became thick and ionized with magic. Shining Armor turned slowly.

A creature now stood in the dust at a distance from him, but not facing him completely. She was tall and narrow, but her body was completely obscured by a thick semi-metallic armored pressure suit and a long, flowing cloak that seemed oddly tattered. Even her face was covered, but with a metal mask carved into the shape of what Shining Armor imagined her face looked like beneath. On the crest of her head, where her mane should have been, sat three long horns.

“Shining Armor,” she said. Her voice echoed through the land. It was not spoken through actual speech, but rather through some kind of spell. Considering that her mask had no mouth hole- -or even openings for her eyes- -Shining Armor assumed that speaking through magic was her only means of communication.

“You know my name,” he said.

She turned her face toward him, and her pupilless metal eyes seemed to stare into him for a long moment. “You should not be here. You are dead.”

“I know,” he said.

“Interesting,” she said. “You have sealed your soul into a phylactery. Is this your pitiful attempt at immortality?”

“Nothing is immortal.”

“Such a primitive thought, but what I would expect from a necromancer. Assuming you even can still think. Although, actually, I must admit that this surprises me.”

“How so?” Shining Armor spoke with his voice perfectly measured and controlled. Even after so long, and even after dying, he still recalled his training. The battle between them had already started, and he knew that he needed to act carefully.

“I believe I have underestimated your magical ability.”

“Have we met?”

“I suppose not,” said the tall pony. “We were not contemporaries. But I am aware of you. Or what you were. In fact, I always rather looked up to you. It was you, in a way, who inspired me to become the ‘pony’ that I am today.”

“And am I to assume that you are the one called Thebe?”

“That is correct, yes.”

Shining Armor smiled, although he was not sure that Thebe could see him doing so. He tried to modulate his voice to be just mildly mocking, which was not an easy task with a through made from undead flesh and metal. “I was expecting an alicorn.”

“I am an alicorn,” said Thebe, surprisingly nonplussed with what was supposed to be an insult. “But wings are a terribly useless appendage. I have no desire to fly.”

Shining Armor felt a spell close in around him, but his seals held. Thebe’s spell let up almost as soon as it encountered them, holding just outside the metaphysical border of the protective spell. Shining Armor realized that it was probably not an offensive spell, and quite possibly how Thebe was able to sense the world.

“However,” said Thebe, her magic voice icy. “There is a special place in what is left of my heart for my hatred for you. This is not a place where you should have come, lich.”

“So you do not know me, and yet you hate me?”

“Only because I know what you have done. The same thing I admire about you is the same reason I despise you.”

“And what have I done?”

The spell around him tightened. It was not even intended as an attack, but it shattered several of Shining Armor’s outer seals. He did not react- -it was still too early for that- -but he made a mental note not to take a direct hit from Thebe. If a sensory spell was cutting his seals, even a simple offensive spell could be devastating.

“You actually don’t know,” said Thebe, sounding somewhat in awe.

“I came here because you know what became of my kingdom,” said Shining Armor.

Thebe only stared for a moment, and then a horrid sound filled the air. Shining Armor realized that it was laughter- -and not all of it was coming from the spell. An almost imperceptible sound was coming from behind the far side of Thebe’s helmet, and Shining Armor saw her ventral air intakes open.

“Now this is amusing,” she said. “I wonder…yes. Even dead, part of you must be suppressing the memory. Which must make you wonder, Shining Armor: what memory is so horrible that even a deadpony cannot bear to face it?”

“Answer the question,” said Shining Armor through his clenched, sharpened metal teeth.

“But you do not need me to do that. You already know the answer. You were there.”

Shining Armor felt images appear on his mental periphery. They were nothing specific, but he could hear screaming and saw flames. That was nothing new- -but there was something horrible in those screams, something ghastly in that memory. He forced it back to where it had been.

“Tell me, Thebe.”

“No.”

“Then I am afraid you will have to take it to your grave.”

“Really?” said Thebe. “You attempt to overthrow the ruler of all Equestria?”

“You are no ruler.”

“And perhaps you are the first to understand that. This world is nothing more than a pointless diversion. Once it is gone, not a single pony will weep for it. Of course, there will be no ponies left.”

“You are a monster. But then again, so am I.” Shining Armor chuckled. “But I suppose I have one more heroic deed left in me.”

“Really?” rasped a tiny voice beside Shining Armor. He turned quickly and saw Thebe’s masked face inches from his own. As he jumped back, he looked back to her previous position- -and saw that she was still occupying it. She had not moved by a teleportation spell, but somehow duplicated.

Then, before his eyes, the original copy dissipated, its form collapsing into space.

“A time spell? But how- -”

“Because Starswirl the Bearded was a juvenile fool,” said Thebe, now standing beside Shining Armor in his new position. This time she had teleported, but without even a hint of magical residue, a feat that should have been impossible. “Although, despite his inevitable failure, he still understood the Elements of Harmony better than your sister.”

Shining Amor reacted quickly. His horn charged and he fired a spell directly into Thebe’s chest. In all her armor, she was too slow to dodge, and it impacted her with the force of a bomb. Shining Armor used the recoil to throw himself backward into a superior ranging position.

His magic reached out around him, scanning the area. This deep, there were no bodies for him to call to his aid. Shining Armor was the only non-alicorn pony to ever make it this deep, and the builders of the eternal towers had left nothing but ash.

That did not matter. No location could escape death.

“Shadowbolts!” he called to the void. “Rise!”

The dust at his feet seemed to shift and rose up as smoke that rapidly resolved into a large group of purple and black-clad ghosts, responding absolutely to his orders, each a somber parody of an air-pony who in life had sworn their eternal allegiance to their Prince.

“Attack.”

The shadows raced forward, their jaws dropping and distorting in silent screams of hatred and aggression. As they did, Shining Armor forced more souls into reality, drawing them from their eternal unrest in Tartarus. Within seconds, he had formed a legion of spirits, each of them clutching ephemeral scythes and broken swords, prepared to strike at the very soul of their target.

Thebe did not seem to react. Even the blast to her chest had not knocked her backward, and Shining Armor saw that her armor was not only intact but completely unscratched. Even with a horde of undead Pegasi swarming toward her, she still did not move.

The tip of her rearmost horn glowed slightly red, and Shining Armor cried out silently in pain as the nearest of the Shadowbolts were destroyed. His eyes widened- -they had not simply been dispelled but completely annihilated. Without any apparent effort, Thebe had shattered their immortal souls, something that until that moment Shining Armor had thought impossible.

Shining Armor screamed in rage as he forced his own magic into his horde, charging their bodies and giving them physical form. At the same time, they ran forward, charging Thebe.

“I don’t have time for this,” said Thebe, her quiet voice echoing through the battlefield. With a surge of magic, Shining Armor’s entire force was torn apart. The lucky among them were thrown backward and dissipated. Most of them were destroyed instantly. Several were changed in a way that even Shining Armor considered unpleasant: they had been injured, their souls only half-destroyed and their bodies walking about the battlefield with various pieces missing.

Shining Armor smiled. He had just won.

The ground beneath Thebe darkened as the spell came to fruition. The shadow became nearly material, and its viscous darkness seemed to climb up Thebe’s body, coating her suit and penetrating even the smallest cracks, meshing with the darkness that was surely inside.

Then two glowing eyes formed on the ground, and the Gloame shadow tightened its grip, preparing to tear the flesh and organs away from its prey.

“Checkmate,” said Shining Armor.

There was a surge of magic, and the shadow was pulled apart, its body reduced to dark shreds as Thebe engaged her defensive spell. The broken shadow dissipated into the wind, and Thebe stood exactly as she had before: in the same position and completely unharmed.

Then Shining Armor was thrown back, and felt his hooves pulled off the ground. All of his seals had been immediately shattered, and he did not have time to generate a proper shield. Thebe now stood inches from him, her body looming over Shining Armor, levitated by her magic.

Shining Armor was lifted to face her. A mechanical-like arm of red light was at his throat, and all though he did not breath, it was dangerously close to his phylactery.

“Impressive enough,” said Thebe, “but pointless. If you came here to avenge your sister, you need to try harder.”

Shining Armor was translocated backward tremendous force. Almost as soon as Thebe released him, he felt himself slamming into one of the towers- -even though the nearest of them was over twenty miles away.

The impact was devastating to his body. Most of it was shattered or broken. Of course, his body consisted of nothing more than enchanted metal. There was no pain, or even discomfort.

Instinctively, he summoned a shield spell, and his body was encased in a pink sphere of energy. Simultaneously, he was struck with a beam of red light. The force of it was unlike anything he had ever felt, but his shield held. The force of the beam poured over it, burning a circle into a steel tower that had managed to stand for a thousand ages without so much as rusting.

Then the beam stopped, and Shining Armor was dropped to the ground. He immediately started reconfiguring his body, but Thebe was already near him, now hovering, her robe trailing behind her like a set of tentacles.

“How dare you…speak of Twilight,” he said, standing. Thebe could have continued her attack; instead, she simply watched him repair. She was either being extremely polite or extremely arrogant- -and either was maddening to Shining Armor.

“I am actually surprised you did not ask about her,” said Thebe. “What happened to the Crystal Empire derives entirely from you, but Twilight’s fate was determined by me.”

“My sister killed herself,” said Shining Armor, using the pause to rebuild his seals and auxiliary shields. His body had now been completely repaired. Although his attacks were doing nothing to Thebe, his energy was not depleting. His phylactery was better made than he had recalled. “Because I wasn’t there for her when she truly needed it.”

“No,” said Thebe. “Tell me, Shining Armor.” Shining Armor could tell that she was smiling, and he fired another powerful bolt of energy at here. It struck, but this time she actually bothered to deflect it, sending it flying off at an oblique angle into the distance. “Do you know what the most popular exhibit in the Equestria History Museum is?”

“Why does that matter?”

“The beautiful severed wings of Twilight Sparkle,” she answered. “Truly a sight to see. And I should know. I’m the one who pulled them off from her.”

With a roar of anger, Shining Armor struck. With a flash, he teleported past her outer defenses and blasted a close-range beam of magic into her face. She repelled it easily, but not before Shining Amor teleported to her left, striking her in the side with a set of blasts.

Then he was slammed into the weathered iron of the cerorian tower once again. This time, Thebe’s magical construct arm was at his throat. What he had initially thought of as her robe shifted, separating itself and hardening into points, nailing him to through each of his limbs to the metal behind him. All through it, Thebe herself never moved. She hung limply in the center of her magic like a corpse.

“My sister killed herself,” repeated Shining Armor.

“Do you truly take comfort in that lie? I was there, Shining Armor. I listened to her screams as I tore those wings off of her back, as she cried out for her friends, and for you. It was I who strangled the life from Twilight Sparkle. She died quickly, but only because of her weakness. Too weak even to kill herself.”

Thebe had finally succeeding in destabilizing Shining Armor. He shifted his body, releasing his pony form and returning to his normal state. One of the new arms that he had spawned reached out for Thebe’s head, its cerorite claws glimmering in the light of her magic.

She stopped it easily by piercing the synthetic bone hand that held the crystal knives- -but that only gave Shining Armor a chance to strike with another one of his limbs, slamming what had once been part of his metal hoof into Thebe’s lowest horn. The blow seemed to be somewhat expected, and Thebe’s magic distorted in a minor explosion, knocking her backward.

Shining Armor released himself, drawing the writhing metal and bone of his body from her grasp and struck again, charging his body with magic and striking repeatedly at the weak points of Thebe’s armor. With each blow, she ignited a powerful shield, one that would have been lethal for any living pony. Shining Armor simply cut through it with his own shield and spells. Each blow moved Thebe farther across the desert.

Her body seemed almost entirely paralyzed. Even as Shining Armor struck her, she never moved of her own volition. Her spells swirled around her, tearing at his body, but she herself never once reacted. This was her second mistake: to assume that her magic alone was enough to stop an equally powerful mage who fought with a precision-built body engineered for battle. The first had been even implying that she had hurt Twilight.

Then he saw the opening he needed- -a chance to strike her in the one exposed part of her body: her horns. He summoned his energy into a single point and teleported above Thebe.

“This is for Twilight,” he said.

Then he was stopped by some unseen force.

“Enough,” said Thebe.

Shining Armor was thrown to the ground. In one motion, Thebe had cracked all of his seals and bypassed his shields entirely, and instead of shattering her horns he found himself lying in radioactive sand beneath her.

“I see,” said Thebe, floating over him. “So you have a weakness for your ‘beloved’ sister.”

“If you killed her, you will suffer,” spat Shining Armor. “She was the Princess of Friendship! Why would you do such a thing?”

Thebe stared down at him. “Can you possibly comprehend the depths of your own hypocrisy?”

Shining Armor did not understand, but he was increasingly beginning to wonder if Thebe was insane- -or just trying to destabilize him.

“I never touched Twilight,” he said. “I loved her. She was my sister.”

“And yet you slew Princess Cadence without hesitation.”

Shining Armor reconfigured his body back into pony form and stood. He summoned all his strength- -but then collapsed onto the ground, screaming.

Something had gone wrong. Something inside him felt as though it was tearing him apart. In his mind, he saw the flames again and the legions of the undead that marched through them. He heard the screaming, now so clear- -and recognized it.

“Shining! No, please! Stop! Shining, please- -”

The echoing screams of his wife poured through his mind, merging with his own.

“What have you done?” he cried to the alicorn above him.

“She was wad a kind and loving pony! The most beautiful of my alicorn sisters! She wasn’t like us, Shining Armor!” Thebe sighed. “But this is the true irony,” said Thebe. “You never cared about either of them. You never loved Cadence, never cared for Twilight. If you had, you would have been there when they needed you. But you left them behind. And now you can’t ever love them again.”

“No! I love Cadence! I love Twilight!”

“You CAN’T. There’s nothing left of you that can.”

“You are lying!”

“You are dead, Shining Armor. Nothing more than a shadow of a great pony while I stand immortal. A crystal cannot feel love.”

“No,” said Shining Armor. He smiled. “But it can do this.”

A ghost appeared behind Thebe, a yellow-orange Pegasus wielding an ethereal sword. Before Thebe could react, the shade of Flash Sentry plunged the sword into her back.

Thebe cried out as her soul itself was pierced. Her armor could do nothing to stop such a blade, and the spells that Shining Armor had created around her body with every strike of his various limbs had pulled a hole just large enough in her defensive spells. His mind was being torn apart from within, but he was still a soldier at heart- -and even in the grip of madness, he would still continue to fight.

The blow would have been fatal to an ordinary pony, but Thebe only appeared to be wounded. Her magic faltered, and she dropped to the ground, landing on her hooves and projecting a magical arm. Before the ghost could escape, Thebe grabbed it, bringing it in front of her face. As it did, her magic swept over it, changing it. Shining Armor watched as the sallowness of his best soldier washed away with color, and as the black sockets of his eyes were filled with eyes. For a moment, Shining Armor could have sworn that a new body was actually beginning to form around Flash Sentry, as if contact with Thebe was restoring him to life.

“Please,” whispered the ghost. “Please…it hurts. I don’t…I don’t want to be here anymore. Please, just kill me. Let me sleep. I just want to die…”

Shining Armor was immediately reminded of why he had sewn Flash Sentry’s mouth shut: he complained far too much about something as insignificant as death.

Thebe stared down at the pleading soul for a moment, and then released him. The changes made were instantly reverted, and the ghost was dispelled rather than destroyed.

“Well,” said Thebe. “I was contemplating letting you survive this. But congratulations. You have initially caused me to cross from boredom into mild annoyance. Now you die.”

There was a surge of a teleportation spell, this one somehow even faster than the ones that Thebe had been using before. Shining Armor was knocked backward and Thebe reappeared in the air over where she had just been standing. In her hoof was a glowing pink-violet crystal.

Shining Amor gasped and clutched his chest.

“Although I suppose you can’t really die,” said Thebe. “But without this, you will meet a fate close enough.”

Then, unable to contain himself, Shining Armor burst out laughing. Even without a face, he could feel the confusion on Thebe’s face. He lowered his hoof to reveal that the crystal that powered his body was still glowing within his chest.

“That thing you are holding,” he said. “It’s not my phylactery.”

Thebe looked down at the spell she was holding in her hoof- -just in time for Shining Armor to detonate the unstable crystal.

His robotic pupils narrowed from the blast of light, and he dug his hooves into the ground and summoned what remained of his energy to cast a powerful shield spell. Instead of surrounding himself, though, he forced the spell around Thebe, containing the blast and reflecting it inward, amplifying it and concentrating it around her body.

The flaming light brightened into a single point several thousand times brighter than the long-dead sun, and the desert was illuminated with violet-white light. Shining Armor cackled madly as he forced the explosion tighter. The blast alone would already have been several hundred kilotons- -and with all that energy concentrated into such a small space, there was no way that even an alicorn as strong as Celestia would have been able to survive.

Then in an instant the shield was shattered. Shining Armor felt his flesh and metal being burned away, not from his own blast but from one that flooded the desert with blood-red light.

The backfire was nearly fatal, and Shining Armor was forced to use almost all of his remaining magic to protect himself. His horn cracked slightly from the blow, but his phylactery was secure.

Before his eyes fully repaired themselves, he hear a crunching sound. It was not loud, but it repeated itself slowly- -and shining Armor realized that it was hoofsteps. His pupils immediately dilated, and the world came into focus.

Approaching him was Thebe, walking slowly over the trinitite that had replaced the sand beneath her. Her armor had been damaged, and one corner of her mask had been torn away. Through it, Shining Armor could see a gleaming red eye with a narrow slit-pupil set on a body of pale, gray, hairless flesh. The upper back of her armor had also been removed, and Shining Armor could see the glow of red runes on black enhancement metal, far more than any unicorn would be able to survive bonded directly to Thebe’s body.

Her appearance was hardly as significant as the feeling that surrounded her. The air suddenly seemed to have become like liquid lead. Thebe’s magic poured out from her, causing the atmosphere itself to burn red. Shining Armor felt like he was being crushed under the oppressive, lethal weight of her energy. For the first time in the fight, he was truly afraid- -and realized that he had made a terrible mistake. He had assumed she was an ordinary alicorn, but now he had no idea what she truly was.

Thebe stopped and stared down at Shining Armor with her one exposed eye.

“What are you?” whispered Shining Armor.

“Love, Frienship; even the Sun and Moon were crushed beneath my might,” replied Thebe in her true voice. She raised one hoof to her face, and bits of metal appeared and reconstructed the damage to her mask and armor. “The weakness of the other four allowed for the strength of the fifth. A true god, one true being, immortal and everlasting, the logical conclusion of pony evolution. I am Thebe: Alicorn of Eternity!”

The battle was lost. Shining Armor summoned his last remaining strength and engaged a long-range teleport. Space shifted, and he emerged in a moist forest somewhere far from Thebe.

“That won’t work,” said Thebe, standing beside him, all three of her horns glowing with horrible red light.

Shining Armor teleported again, this time appearing over a number of icebergs breaking free of some long-abandoned hyperborean island. Like before, Thebe was also there, prepared to strike.

Once again Shining Armor teleported. He knew that he was running out of time; even for him, long-range teleportation took a tremendous amount of energy, and he was already compromising his phylactery. He could avoid Thebe by teleporting, but not indefinitely.

Anywhere he went, she would follow. For a moment he considered teleporting back to his lair, but he knew that a pony as powerful as Thebe would have no trouble following him and compromising his work- -and potentially following the dimensional channels back to Blackest Night.

A terrible thought occurred to him. He knew of one place that he could teleport to that Thebe could not follow, a place only he would be able to reach. For a brief moment, though, he contemplated just allowing himself to die rather than to return to that horrible place- -but he realized that it was his only option.

Shining Armor emerged in a field of clover, and engaged another teleportation spell, this time modifying it slightly for an entirely new kind of destination. As Thebe appeared beside him, he braced himself and flashed out of Equestria entirely.

Thebe teleported again and left the field, her burst of magic incinerating anything living behind her. Her rage was now almost uncontrollable. Shining Armor had been both more clever and more powerful than she had anticipated. As the only unicorn to have ever slain an alicorn- -even a weak and pointless alicorn like Cadenza- -she should have expected as much. Compared to her, though, Shining Armor was insignificant, and yet he had managed to damage her, to remove part of her armor and witness her exposed, naked body beneath. She had already hated him desperately, but now knew that he had to be forced to pay for his crime.

She would tear him apart. She peel his phylactery apart layer by layer, forcing him to suffer for billions of years as she cut away at his soul itself- -or she would just crush him between her hooves and relish the feeling of the lifeless dust falling to be lost forever in her desert.

The teleportation spell completed, and Thebe emerged high in the atmosphere over Equestria. Her levitation spell automatically adjusted, and her horns charged. This time she would strike, and this time he would die- -except as she looked around her, she could not find Shining Armor anywhere in sight.

She immediately expanded the range of her spell. It was impossible that she had failed to follow him; it was a simple matter of running a trace spell before he moved. Thebe reached out to her golems, which by now were all across Equestria- -and had, during her entire battle with Twilight’s deceased brother, still been engaged in lethal war with the vandrares.

If he had been in Equestria, she would have found him, but she did not. He had simply disappeared, which Thebe knew was impossible. She could sense most of the ponies in Equestria, should have been easily able to find one who was little more than a potent mobile spell.

She released a scream of rage that shook the clouds around her, and then calmed herself. The spells that ran through her mind and regulated her aggression began to take effect. She had not gained the satisfaction of killing Shining Armor, but she had also truly lost nothing. Her largest regret of the battle was that she had not simply vaporized him on sight but had bothered to toy with him.

With some thought, however, she concluded that this fate was superior. Death would be too good for him. He must be forced to remember what he had done, to wallow in the shame of his crimes. It was only a matter of time before his memories came through and destroyed whatever was left of him.

Thebe felt happy with the conclusion of the battle, and returned to her Pyramid to complete the process she had begun earlier. Shining Armor would burn soon enough, wherever he had gone- -along with the rest of Equestria.