“Do you at least agree,” she says, more calmly, after her shouting has failed to much move the Princess, “that it is wronging someone greatly to prevent them from living up to their values, even if in so doing they would face danger?”

Celestia pauses in thought a moment, as though she’s genuinely never thought of this line of reasoning before. “Yes, I suppose,” she says, “but—”

“I think,” says Valiant Victory, “that I cannot possibly fulfill my values by staying in Equestria while an entire plane of endless torture exists elsewhere. I would like to leave.”

“Do not throw yourself into Hell meaning to fight it,” says Celestia gravely. “Many before you have tried, and—”

“I’m not fucking dumb,” says Valiant Victory. “I do, you know, intend to get strong enough to win first.”

“Where, then, do you want to go?”

“The world Abrogail came from, I think, unless you—no, actually.” She doesn’t particularly trust the Princess to tell her where better Hell-fighting opportunites could be found even if she knows. “Abrogail’s world, please.”

Celestia’s eyes go unfocused for a moment, as though her attention is elsewhere. “Sorry,” she says eventually. “Apparently there are ‘already too many of you there’, whatever that means. I could, however, send you somewhere very similar…”

You wouldn't normally expect to see an injured horse being treated as an emergency on this level. Certainly they're very valuable pieces of property, but they don't usually merit being carried in on a stretcher to interrupt a festival.

Most horses are not baby pegasi. A young Pegasi is worth several thousand pounds on the open market, if it's somewhere that slavery of such beings is legal, and while Mendev thoroughly bans such practices that doesn't leave them much less treasured. A Pegasus is almost always good, as smart as a human, and as capable against demons as a veteran soldier even when they aren't helping crusaders take the fight to winged adversaries - whether alone or as part of a herd, their aid is always treasured in Mendev. 

Despite himself, Hulrun had been trying to enjoy the festival. While almost nowhere in Kenabres is ever reliably free of cultists, Terendelev had made a convincing argument that if he was too visibly on his guard it would undermine the whole purpose of arranging the celebration in the first place, and if there weren't enough licit opportunities for people to relax and enjoy themselves they'd be more likely to fall into illicit ones. The persuasiveness of her points didn't make it any less uncomfortable, though, so when he notices the commotion at the edge of the plaza it's almost a relief when Tirabade starts calling for a healer and the gawkers part around his now-hurried approach.

"You there, what happened here? That's no ordinary wound."

"Demons, sir! We found her - or him, I'm not sure - barely hanging on near the walls."

"By the walls? Pegasi young rarely travel alone, especially not somewhere this dangerous; if they showed up alone and injured then there's something nearby that was strong enough to ambush a herd. We need to increase the patrols."

While he speaks, he considers the possibility of deception. You need beast shape three to turn yourself into a Pegasus, or greater polymorph to transform another, and he's not detecting any illusion or transmutation auras - it's at least probably as it seems, and if it's not there's enough effort put in that he should expect any cheap tests to also fail to distinguish matters. He reaches for his bag of diamond dust, and turns towards the injured equine.

"Hold fast, we'll see you right. Radiant Iomedae, Light of the Sword..."

When she comes to, she's lying on her back, in a great deal of pain from what's probably, if she can trust her proprioception, a rather large hole in her chest. This is not, in itself, a surprising situation. She'll heal fast enough—Celestia has been gracing everyone in her general vicinity with even more implausibly fast healing than is usual for ponies, though the toll it's taking on her is obvious—

She realizes, before this rather automatic train of thought can quite complete, that the faces looking down at her are not ponies, and then she remembers that, oh yes, the war is over, she was petrified to be preserved for a day when Equestria needed her again, and then she was unpetrified and discovered that, actually, Equestria needs her much less than most places that exist.

That doesn't explain the hole in her chest. Celestia may have turned out to be enormously short-sighted and also kind of an idiot, but she would definitely have warned her if her planar travel spell came with a risk of leaving a chunk of herself behind, or whatever in fact happened here.

"Where am I?" she asks. No one without active Tongues will be able to understand her; the language she's speaking has some distinctly horse-like sounds, but it is, still, fairly clearly a language and not mere neighing.

To anyone who happens to have ever actually seen a normal baby pegasus out of Golarion, she is pretty obviously not one; her head is larger, relative to her body, and much rounder than the normal equine shape, and her legs are shorter. She has, not that anyone can currently see it the way she's positioned on the stretcher, an image on both flanks dyed directly into her coat, which isn't exactly the standard version of Iomedae's holy symbol but would be close enough for a cleric to cast with.

He, unfortunately, does not have a permanent Tongues or Comprehend Languages up. Too many demons have dispels for permanent spells to stick around long term, and trying just means trading money for finding demons at an unfavorable rate, so he makes up for it with being fluent in a half dozen languages and a wand of comprehend languages. He misses his enchantment sight far more, anyway.  Unfortunately, Equestrian is not one of the languages he knows, and judging by the look on her face it's not one of Tirabade's either - not Sylvan or Celestial, then, and if a Pegasus had started speaking to him he'd have guessed one of those.

"You there, make yourself useful and fetch Terendelev! My healing isn't enough for this."

He turns to examine the equine more closely as he waits. It's Lawful Good, supposedly, but Pegasi aren't usually strong enough to detect - between that and the speech, it brings to mind certain heroic pegasi bloodlines, and also an infiltrator getting sloppy. He waits for a few moments, cycling through his detection spells to try and check for the work of someone only moderately more powerful than he is and to rule out most ways of faking an alignment detection with an item, and then burns a chunk of tourmaline to cast glimpse of truth.

Nothing changes in either the horse or the guards carrying the stretcher, which means that unless he's dealing with something he's never heard of this should be as it seems. That's worth two charges from his wand, even if he's not exactly expecting actionable intel from it.

"You're safe now, you're in Kenabres. What happened to you?"

Oh, good, translation magic. Speaking is still going to be difficult, though.

"Came here from...another plane. Last thing I remember. Don't know how...I was injured."

"Which plane? What's the last thing you remember?"

"My dear Prelate, perhaps we can save the interrogation for when they aren't laid out from pain?"

As she lays a hand on the Pegasus' hoof, a warm light flows through Valiant Victory, knitting her chest back together and reducing the pain to a dull throb. Even as the magic does it's work, however, she's already frowning, and twists her hands through the motions for another spell that doesn't seem to accomplish anything that Valiant Victory can detect.

"That curse of yours is a remarkably vicious one - my magic was only enough to deal with the symptoms. It should hold for now, but you can send for me if it suddenly worsens, and I'll tell the people at the cathedral to expect you tomorrow. We'll find a way to help you."

"Curse?—could you put me down, please?" She really doesn't like being on her back with her hooves flopping uselessly in the air, especially if there are things around that want to curse her.

They can gently set the stretcher down, sure, and move aside to give her room to get up. It was getting kind of tiring to hold it anyway.

“Most likely the work of whoever brought you here, or a compatriot of theirs. There aren’t a lot of people who can lay curses strong enough to give Terendelev trouble.”

She resists the urge to laugh. Whatever Celestia's faults, the thought of her cursing anyone is ridiculous. Although—actually just no.

"The place I'm from is called Equestria," she says. "I don't think it has any contact with this world; until very recently I don't think anypony* except the Princess** was aware there was anything beyond Equestria at all. The Princess sent me here because I asked her to; I can't imagine that she would have cursed me. That's the last thing I remember. Something must have happened to me between my initial arrival in your world, and your people finding me, but I have no memory of it."

She doesn't speak like a child, in spite of her small size and generally neotenous features.

Also, as she stands, her cutie mark becomes visible to Hulrun, not that she's expecting him to have any particular reaction to it.

(*) Translates as the literal words 'any pony', though the magic makes it obvious that she's referring to her own species.

(**) Perhaps translates more like 'Empress'; it's the feminine form of the title of the ruler of Taldor.

He meets her expectations here! Enough crusaders have similar tattoos to make it unremarkable, and the fact that she claims to be from somewhere out of contact with Golarion doesn't change that; it's not as though gods are subject to the same limitations as mortals.

"I'm certainly not familiar with it. It's a shame your introduction to our plane had to be marred by such an occurance, but Kenabres is quite safe from such matters. If you're feeling up for it, I suggest availing yourself of the festival - both to take your mind off the pain, and perhaps to get to know some people. I expect Rathimus should have a tongues or two prepared, at least."

She doesn't consider Valiant Victory being sent by an empress to be very important; she's never had any patience for mortal status games, and doesn't expect Pegasi to be an exception to that. She does have opinions on this person deciding to send them to the worldwound of all places, but if they have as little contact as the pony is suggesting it might not even reflect that badly on them.

"There's no need to apologize; I expected danger, if not exactly this."

She's good at reading people; she can read a little bit between the lines of what Terendelev is saying, and also hasn't failed to pick up on the fact that the aliens think she's cute and childlike, which she doesn't exactly appreciate. She should probably...say something to dispel the impression she's a victim here?

"Equestria was...very safe, I think, relative to most places that exist. Not totally; there were some evils, and I was one of the ponies that defended Equestria against them. But I learned recently that, well, Hell exists, and that this fact had been deliberately concealed from me for reasons I didn't endorse. I ended up demanding to leave Equestria and go somewhere I could help people who actually needed it, and the Princess agreed to transport me."

"I don't actually know anything about this place or even what process selected it out of all the places I could have been sent, so I'd appreciate a brief introduction, if you don't mind." She's looking at Terendelev when she says this; something about Hulrun gives her a bad vibe.

Not a child, then, or somewhere where childhood means something different than it does among mortals. She supposes some might have considered her a child in her twenties, but that wouldn't have changed the fact that she was far more able to deal with evil than most adult humans even at that age, and wouldn't have taken being treated as one by them well.

"I mentioned the city, but Kenabres is located in Mendev, a country in the north of of Golarion* near where the Abyss** touches on the prime material. The border is about a mile and a half north of here, and though it's been a few years since the last serious attempt to change that it's still a going concern to fend off raids and cultists. The city should be a safe place to get your bearings, especially until we can do something about that curse of yours, but if you do decide to travel south I strongly advise you find a group to go with. Not all demons get stopped at the border, and flight is far less reliable a protection against them than it is against most other dangers. As for the Prince of Darkness... I would hardly call myself a friend of his, but the worldwound treaty does mean we sometimes get a few of his followers passing through. I don't believe we have any at the moment, but if you stay around long enough that probably won't hold true forever."

*The Cage

**Endless swirling void of chaotic horrors

Yikes! She does trust, at least, that Celestia was aiming for 'place she could do a lot of good by fighting' and not 'place that would reliably get her killed', but—well, she notes herself considering the question, when two days ago (subjectively) she wouldn't have at all.

"Is the border with the...Abyss...a permanent feature of the world? What efforts have been made to permanently close it?" she asks. "Also. I ought to check explicitly that this is in fact the worst problem in this world and you don't have a dozen disasters of equal or greater magnitude going on in other places. I assume that if you'd make a treaty with Hell about it it must be very bad."

She's actually baffled about what kind of person would follow the Prince of presumably-Hell, but she's not going to get into that right now.

"It opened up about a century ago, when Aroden died, and has proven rather difficult to get rid of; Sarenrae's church tried a miracle during the second crusade, and it ended up not being enough. I expect it'll be closed eventually, but I'm not sure anyone else in the city will live to see it. As for problems... well, it's the worst that isn't contained. Tar-Baphon getting loose again would probably be worse but Lastwall has him much more thoroughly trapped than we have the demons, the Tanglebriar is strictly less bad than this, and Nidal and Geb mind their own business unless someone's poking them. The demons are at risk of overrunning the continent if they get a large enough breakthrough during their next push, which is why everyone takes stopping them from doing that very seriously."

She's going to want to read some histories rather than (a) take up much more of this woman's time and (b) adopt her perspective unquestioningly, but the picture does seem to be pretty clear.

"That does sound very bad," she says. "I think I'll probably end up wanting to help, but for now I'm going to spend some more time getting my bearings. Thank you for your efforts to heal me; I hope to repay them."

"You are quite welcome."

And then with this issue temporarily averted, she can go back to enjoying the festival. It's all too rare these days she gets a chance to really relax, so she tries to make the most of the options she has.

Hulrun would actually rather like to interrogate her some more but it would be stretching the spirit of Terendelev's orders and there's probably not anything else worth the charges of the wand it would take to get it. He'll see about following through on increasing the patrols around Kenabres instead, in case whatever gave her that cursed wound tries its luck again.

And Valiant Victory will head off to explore the festival as well.

There are a lot of things she could do here, even if she's currently conversationally impaired when it comes to making friends. She could throw darts to impress people with how dexterous her hooves are, sample the free festival food or drinks, run an obstacle course, listen or dance to music, go window shopping to see if any of the trinkets catch her eye...

Alternatively, if she wants to try her hand at social interaction anyway she could make an effort at that as well. There's what looks to be a noble of some sort complaining to a bunch of their fellows about something incomprehensible while idly waving a drink in one hand, a group of teenage boys hyping each other up as they take turns going at a training dummy with wooden swords, or even a few bizarre looking earth ponies* wearing bridles connected to a post nearby some wagons.

*Horses.

Apparently the translation magic gives her the ability to understand the aliens' language, but not to speak it. She really should have asked more questions about the language situation while she could. Unfortunately, there's not much she can do about that now.

...you know what, she'll try to talk to the weird looking giant earth ponies. It would be surprising for them to speak her language, but more likely than that any of the bipedal aliens do.

The earth ponies in question do not appear to speak or understand Equestrian, but they also don't act like exactly like how somepony back home would have to being spoken to in a foreign language. It's not that they're ignoring her, though, their strangely set eyes do seem to be tracking her movement.

They’re different enough from the ponies she knows that it does eventually occur to her that they might not be sapient; she walks away and heads to the next attraction.

Then she can have a reasonably tolerable festival experience, at least for the next twenty minutes or so; her appearance catches a lot of attention, but not hostile attention. Her injury obligingly stays quiescent the whole while.

It would be a mistake to say the attack was scheduled. That's not to say that they didn't have a coordinated time where the strike was supposed to happen so much as a few demons, pushed past the limits of their patience while waiting on tenterhooks for the right moment, decide to get things started early by teleporting right into the festival plaza to cause havoc. Their fellows, either due to sudden fear that they'd missed the signal or realizing their element of surprise was about to go out the window, join them. In the span of seconds after the first demons entered the city, dozens more appear in clouds of sulpherous smoke or shed their mortal disguises to join the fun. The celebrating crowds very quickly start having a bad time, a fact which is not helped at all by the panic and terror that overtakes most of them.

Well, shit.

She knew enough about the situation here to realize this was possible, of course, but that’s not the same thing as having expected it. If she’d expected it she’d have prioritized arming herself—presumably a species with a different body plan has unfamiliar weapons but they can’t be that different.

She takes off into the air and starts kicking demons in the face. It’s not as effective as it would be with a proper set of blades, but she is wearing her armor, including spiked back shoes for just this purpose, and in spite of her small stature she’s stronger than a full-size Golarion warhorse. Her kicks hurt, especially if the target is evil. It’s her special talent.

She's not the only one fighting! From aerial vantage, she can see clear across the plaza, and here and there pockets of resistance emerge. The old man who interrogated her earlier seems to be cutting his way through some disgusting ooze monster, a man with blond ringlets gets a red-skinned figure right through the throat, a mage of some kind counters a demonic teleport to leave its fellow isolated and surrounded, and all around the square more ordinary soldiers manage to prove victorious when the numbers are favorable enough.

They are, unfortunately, the exceptions to the rule, and it's quickly becoming hard to find somewhere to look that's not filling up with the dead and dying. By far the worst front seems to be coming from above, though; here and there, scattered archers manage to take down an aerial demon, but the vast majority are completely free to swoop around unopposed to pick off stragglers and the defenseless.

Well, she can fly. She probably cannot, actually, fly faster than anything on the face of Golarion, because there are enough things on the face of Golarion that any superlative claim is a bad bet, but she can fly much, much faster than any of the demons currently in Kenabres.

She grabs a bow and quiver from one of the fallen. It's a bit awkward for her to use, and will prevent her from showing off the true absurdity of her Fly speed, but she can shoot flying demons while merely being much faster than any of them.

The flying demons will give her a bit more space, then, there's softer targets for the cowards and most of the rest of the braver fliers are busy dealing with the enormous silver dragon taking off over there.

Her elevated position also makes it easier for people to see her, though, and some enormous... scorpion-pony demon starts bounding through the air towards her position.