This isn't the storage room.

It is, instead, a...restaurant of some kind? The back wall is all windows, and on the other side of the windows is outer space. The stars are not Equestria's familiar stars either. An unexpectedly large number of them are currently exploding.

"Um...where am I?" she says aloud. "Is anypony here?"

There is not currently anyone else there. However, a napkin appears on the bar, on which is written:

Welcome to Milliways, the restaurant at the end of the universe! The first drink is free.

That doesn't really answer any of her questions. Really, it just generates a lot more.

Milliways is an interdimensional bar accessible from a large number of different universes. Time in a given universe does not pass while a patron therefrom is inside with the door closed. Food, beverages, and books from any of the universes from which Milliways is accessible are available for purchase. I can accept almost anything of value in exchange for purchases but you do have to pay somehow.

Violence against other patrons is strictly forbidden in the main bar area. Security will be enforced by categorically adequate means.

Holy shit this is so cool!!!

She will continue to quiz the bar on the finer details of how the hay any of this works, and receive mostly unsatisfactory answers, until another patron arrives.

In walks a much larger equine in an exotic brown.

Brown isn't that exotic a color! Dr. Whooves is brown—that said, she's not entirely sure that Dr. Whooves isn't himself an alien. Mostly, her reaction is 'aaah why is she so big' and 'what happened to her face'.

Katixa will see a pastel purple winged unicorn about three feet high at the shoulder, reading a book and drinking from a teacup that she's levitating in front of her face. Compared to the animal that some other places call a 'horse', she has a much larger cranium and shorter snout, with large, relatively forward-facing eyes. Her mane and tail are multicolored and there's a design apparently dyed into both of her flanks.

"Oh, hi!" she says to the new arrival, suddenly looking up from her book. "I'm Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship. What's your name?"

Katixa can speak, in Milliways, due to the translation effect being willing to convert whuffling noises and nickers that she means something verbal by into words for her!

Katixa doesn't know that, though! She inspects the levitating teacup curiously and doesn't say anything.

(The Equestrian language actually consists mostly of phonemes that Katixa could in theory produce, but it's not familiar to her, and if the translation effect is causing her to hear, say, Taldane, then she may not realize that she can reply.)

... oh, right, the alien doesn't speak Equestrian. Why would she? Still, one wonders how the bar does, so it's worth testing. "Tap your hoof twice if you can understand me but not reply," she says.

She offers Katixa the teacup. It's full of tea, though probably too small for her to drink from without spilling the entire thing.

Tap tap! Katixa can drink reasonably delicately from open vessels. A teacup is a challenge and she spills a little, but not all of it.

Actually, wait, this is an alien, there are more basic things she ought to be checking. "Tap once for yes and twice for no—does your species normally communicate with language?"

Tap tap. Her species is "horse"; Katixa is just a special example of the species.

... rather than try to figure this out via hoof-taps, Twilight is just going to ask the bar what species Katixa is and how she normally communicates.

In Milliways, she can talk if she tries!

"Um, anyway, this place is called Milliways and apparently it connects to a large number of different universes," she tells Katixa. "The bar is intelligent and you can ask it for things; it says that in here, you can talk if you try. There's translation magic active, or else you wouldn't be able to understand me."

"...I can talk?" says Katixa. "...I can talk! Can I get my paladin and talk to him?"

"If you leave and let the door close behind you, you probably won't be able to get back in. I can hold the door for you, I guess?"

"I also don't know what a 'paladin' is but I'm willing to be shown rather than told."

"Well he's not right where I was. He's doing important government things. A paladin's a holy warrior but right now there is not fighting and there is government so he's doing that."

"I'm glad there's no fighting! I'm technically a Princess but I haven't been one very long and the older Princesses do most of the actual governing. I suppose that talking to aliens probably would be one of my royal duties, although I found this place quite by accident and didn't intend to meet any aliens when I woke up this morning." It's probably not in Celestia's power to create an interdimensional bar but she absolutely would arrange the whole thing just as it's happened if it were.

"Uh, what's your name, by the way?"

"I'm Katixa!"

"I'm Twilight, but I think you already know that. It's nice to meet you!"

"Tell me more about your world! I've only been to one alternate universe so far but it didn't have any ponies* in it."

(*) From Twilight's perspective, Katixa is a very weird-looking pony, but a pony nonetheless.

"Uuuuum, I've only been a person for about a year and a half so I don't know all that much even though my paladin tells me stuff all the time. But it's got evil gods! One of them had a whole country! We have been working so hard to help the country not be the kind of country that an evil god made it be any more now that we have won it from the forces of Hell!"

The words 'god' and 'Hell' don't translate precisely but that still sounds. Uh. Yikes.

... she should, probably, like. Tell the Princess that Equestria has made contact with a universe that has evil gods in it?

"What do you mean, you've only been a person for a year and a half?" she asks Katixa. (Presumably if she were only that old she would have just said that.) "—hold on, I probably ought to tell some people from my world what's going on." And she trots over to the door, pokes her head out, and yells, "SPIKE!!"

"That's how long ago I awakened. Most horses aren't people but very cool special paladins like my paladin have magic that makes their horses people, and I'm his horse, so now I'm a person. It was very startling! It happened right in the middle of a battle!"

"Oh, that's cool!" Although it seems like it would probably be...traumatizing...to come into existence in the middle of a battle. "In Equestria all ponies are people, plus dragons and gryphons and a few other species. What are most people in your world like?"

     Before Katixa can answer, a tiny* purple-and-green dragon arrives at the door.

     "Hey Twilight, what's—whoa, what is this place?"

"It's a long story. If I leave I can't get back in, so can you go tell the other girls to meet me here?"

     "Sure."

(*) Probably just Small, in Pathfinder terms, though relative to the typical size of a dragon he's tiny.

"Most people have two legs. Hello dragon!"

"Oh, the other world I went to was like that. I don't think it's the same as your world, though."

     "Hello, uh, whatever you are," says Spike.

"I am a horse."

     "Well, it's nice to meet you," says Spike.

     He leaves and one brief timeskip later comes back with five other ponies.

"Hey Twilight, what'd you want us—oh, you found Milliways."

She really should not be surprised but she is.

"You know about this place?"

"Hol' on, what place?—I thought this room was a closet," says Applejack, getting a glance inside.

"Milliways! Best parties in the whole multiverse!"

"Hello! I'm Katixa!"

They have all by now learned to ignore Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie.

"... anyway, Katixa, these are my friends Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and Fluttershy," says Twilight, pointing out each of them in turn. "This is Katixa, she's from another world."

"Whoa, that's awesome."

"It's lovely to meet you."

"Howdy," says Applejack, and then a whispered aside to Twilight, "What the hay is going on here?"

"I wish I knew, but basically this restaurant somehow connects to a bunch of alternate universes. The one Katixa is from has evil gods so I was going to ask the Princess if there's anything we should be doing about that."

To Katixa—"Can you summarize the whole 'evil god' situation in a bit more detail?"

"Oh, well, the one who had the country we are working in is named Asmodeus. He's very bad. He's the Lawful Evil god of tyranny and slavery and he rules Hell. But the Glorious Reclamation, that's the paladin order I belong to, and some of its allies, conquered his country Cheliax away from him, and now we're Gloriously Reclaiming it. Except that after the fighting part got over with, this is mostly about riding around together so my paladin can be a judge for a lot of people who don't have a good judge, and he does not like it at all. But now we're in a city doing government things and I think that is better for him even though we do not get to spend as much time together."

"That's awful," says Applejack with frank horror. "Is there anything we can do to help?"

"I don't know! If you are powerful adventurers there are a lot of Good things to do but if you want to help specifically with the government things or the judging things those are more complicated."

From the connotations the translation effect is giving her for 'adventurers', it sounds like the word does describe her and her friends, and only them in all of Equestria. If Katixa's world has a standard word for it—well, she already knew that the other world had a lot of problems.

"I think you could reasonably describe us as 'adventurers' but I don't know how powerful we are by your world's standards. It sounds like your world has a lot more, uh, adventure going on."

"... there actually isn't really anyone else here who does what we do, and we can't abandon Equestria even if your world needs help a lot more, which it sounds like it might. But Equestria is always interested in making friends with people from other places, and that's also part of my responsibility, so I do want to visit your world. But I'm going to write to the Princess first and explain the situation."

She has Spike scribe and then send a letter briefly explaining the situation, including the interdimensional bar and the alien and the evil gods.

"Oh of course if you already have an adventuring job you should finish that before looking for more!" says Katixa.

"Oh, there aren't any emergencies right now."

Dearest Twilight—

Actually, no, this is too bizarre a situation to be resolved via letter.

Teleport.

(There is a flash of golden light, and a white winged unicorn twice Twilight's size—though still smaller than Katixa—appears in the library outside the entrance to Milliways. She's wearing royal regalia and her iridescent mane streams out behind her without any apparent wind.)

"Princess."

(All of the ponies jump in surprise and then bow.)

Celestia gestures for them to rise.

"I'm afraid I'll have to apologize to your new friend," she says, nodding in Katixa's direction. "Unfortunately, this portal is dangerous to Equestria and I'm going to have to close it."

Twilight looks back to Katixa. "Sorry," she says. "I wish we could have been friends. But she does have a point. It sounds like your world has a lot of problems that Equestria really isn't prepared to deal with, and it's probably better if we aren't connected."

"Okay. It was nice to meet you!"

"Actually, closing that door is the most dangerous thing you can possibly do, in the sense that the entire universe will be destroyed if you do."

Celestia sighs. "Discord, I don't have time for your games right now."

He makes an expression like a kicked puppy. "Would I ever lie to you?"

"Yes."

"Everybody out, please."

     The six ponies file out of Milliways and back into Twilight's library.

Celestia shuts the door with the nudge of a hoof.

—and Twilight and her friends find themselves, somehow, on the Milliways side of it, though it can no longer be opened by any of them.

"Um."

"Well, it appears that higher powers have decided to keep us here anyway."

Katixa looks quizzically at Discord.

"Oh, don't mind me," he says, then tears open a hole in the fabric of reality and steps through, closing it behind him.

Elorri would know what to do, or, if he did not know what to do, he would explain to Katixa afterwards what it was that made it so complicated and then she wouldn't feel so dumb about not knowing what to do.

"... you probably shouldn't, actually, mind him. That's Discord; he kind of does what he wants, and he says a lot of stuff that doesn't make any sense. Usually it turns out all right in the end."

(If Katixa has any kind of aura sight, Discord is blindingly Chaotic but not, actually, Evil.)

(Katixa has no such thing! She's a horse!)

"Anyway, we'd still love to visit your world, and since the door on our end appears to be closed, it can't hurt Equestria." Also, depending on whether it still works this way after Discord messed with it, time may or not be passing in Equestria right now at all.

"...but won't you try to go home someday?"

"Of course! I think that actually no time is passing in Equestria right now, if this place works the way it claims to, but either way a door that's only open briefly provides a lot less opportunity for evil gods to get into Equestria than a door that's open all the time. Or maybe we won't end up going home by that door at all. One of the things I want to do in your world is see if they know any other magic that might help us get home."

"Oh, they probably do! It would be expensive though. My paladin can't do it."

Twilight's familiar literally eats Wish diamonds for breakfast, but she has no way of knowing that gemstones are particularly valuable in Golarion's magic system.

"Yeah, we'll have to figure that out. Where does your door open from?"

"The church stable."

"What's a 'church'?"

"A church is where everybody who follows a particular god gets together to talk about that. My paladin is an Iomedaean so it's an Iomedaean church."

Twilight continues to be confused about what a 'god' is but she can probably figure that out by visiting the 'church'.

"Alright. I think that for the door to continue working you need to stay here, is that okay? If you tell us how to find your 'paladin' we can find them and bring them here so you can talk, since it sounds like you can't talk outside of Milliways?"

"Oh... I know his face but I don't know how to tell you about his face enough. Especially since you aren't used to people with two legs. His name is Ser Elorri Victor Goés though! If you can talk there then you can ask people for him."

"I know a spell for translation, I hope it works on two-legged people. We'll try to find him."

She casts Starswirl's Universal Translator* on herself and steps through Katixa's door. Her friends follow her, though they're hanging back, since they don't speak the language. What's on the other side?

(*) Literally just Tongues, since MLP might as well run on Pathfinder rules if it needs to have a coherent magic system anyway. Mechanically, Twilight is currently an Arcanist** 12 / Archmage 1 with some custom feats.

(**) Not quite, but explaining the subtleties would require a whole essay on Pathfinder reification that I'll write in some more appropriate forum.

Katixa was going into the stable from having gone out in the yard, so the door leads into the yard when she opens it going the other way. It's summer out, and the yard is green, with a trampled dirt path from the stable door (that they're now emerging "from") to the rectory in the one direction, and another to the sanctuary in the other direction. There's an apple tree and a neglected kitchen garden and a stone bench that has had some of its edges chipped away and an actually paved path to the street, through the gate in the fence.

(When it was an Asmodean church, the stable was not horse-operable, but a Reclamation paladin on assizes stopped in Westcrown a year ago and had the mechanisms changed out while he was there, just in case, even though he didn't have a magic horse of his own.)

They will head for the building that looks like it's meant to be open to the public.

The temple of Iomedae is whitewashed, large, and bustling. Everyone there is very busy, or is waiting for one of the busy people and getting in the way while they wait.

Still, a pastel pony is a distracting enough sight to briefly get everyone's attention, a cascade of people seeing her out of the corners of their eyes and turning their heads and alerting people who didn't spot her on their own.

A couple people draw swords and a few other people head for the far exit.

"... we come in peace!" she announces, seeing the swords. "I can explain but it's a slightly absurd explanation and I'd prefer to only have to prove it once."

That gets swords lowered but not actually sheathed and doesn't stop anybody who's already started for the exit. "Where's Iustin?" someone says, and, "This isn't an Iustin-only problem," and "Well, where's Lieutenant Sauer, or -" and then: "Select!"

The Select emerges from a room where he was taking a meeting. (The guy who was standing guard outside the door where he was doing that is among the drawn swords people.) "- what is going on?"

"We're from another world and got here mostly by accident. I can demonstrate this if you follow me to the stable. Our intentions are friendly and we definitely don't mean anyone any harm...unless they're an evil god I guess, I've heard this world has those."

Why is this happening. "Please excuse me," he says to another person emerging from the meeting room, and he wades through the remaining crowd to approach her. "- okay," he says, when he sees the portal, "so... there's a portal, and also all the horses that were inside the stable are now trapped there?"

"From my perspective, my closet was suddenly replaced with this room just like your stable was. I went in, and while I was inside, Katixa came in. I don't know what happened to the rest of your horses—actually, I think if you closed the door and then reopened it, you could get back into the building that's supposed to be there, but then you'd probably lose access to Milliways, and access to Milliways seems quite valuable in addition to representing my friends' and my most likely chance of getting home."

Blai looks thoughtfully at the portal for a minute, then looks over his shoulder. "Lieutenant Sauer? - has anyone seen - you there, would you like to run an errand for the Church, help out some of the paladins' horses -"

"Yes, Select?"

"Hunt up someone who can cut a hole in the side of the building neatly and hang a new door in it."

"Yes, Select." Off runs the randomly chosen citizen.

"Yeah, that's a good idea," she comments. "Anyway, the particularly valuable thing about Milliways that I've discovered so far is that if you're inside with the door closed, no time passes on the outside, and also you can buy books from—a very large number of worlds. I couldn't get a clear answer on how many worlds there are exactly but it's apparently larger than my language has a word for."

"You can do that in Axis, but - does this cost someone intervention budget?"

"Intervention budget?"

"- is any of this besides the welfare of the horses time-sensitive, I don't know how aggressively to prioritize conversation topics."

"... uh, there needs to be someone from your universe inside holding the door open at all times, and Katixa will probably get bored of that eventually, but I can't think of anything more urgent than that. As far as I know time is literally stopped in my world relative to us."

"Whose horse is Katixa, I don't know all the paladins' horses names or even which of them are awakened."

"She said his name was, uh, 'Ser Elorri Victor Goés'—oh yeah, another thing Milliways has is translation magic that allows your horses to talk, at least the ones who are people."

"He's not in but I would expect him to come back before nightfall. Ah, intervention budget is a limitation observed by gods seeking to influence the material plane. They would often work at cross purposes or simply exert too much power to be safe for mortals and our environs otherwise - or there may be other reasons, I have no expectation we've been informed of the full picture - at any rate, all of the books throughout Creation are copied to the First Vault in Axis, but one does not go book-shopping in Axis because this would be staggeringly expensive, due to the need to compensate the expenditure of that budget in addition to the materials and labor of the book itself."

"What ... is a 'god', I don't think Equestria has those."

"Gods are -

- I suppose it won't help if I say they are the kind of thing that empowers clerics?"

"No, I don't know what those are either. It sounds like a kind of spellcaster—I don't think we have spellcasters who were empowered by someone else, what would that even mean...um, I guess Princess Celestia made me an alicorn* and that made me more powerful, but I could already do magic before that and she definitely doesn't do it regularly."

(*) Tongues makes it obvious that this is the kind of pony Twilight is, with both wings and a horn.

"I'm a cleric. We are a kind of spellcaster; we can't cast spells without the endorsement and backing of our patrons and are chosen for this privilege by being well-suited to advancing our gods' interests in the Material. Acting by proxy like that is presumably less expensive than most other ways of affecting things."

"Yeah, we don't have that. Uh, as for Milliways, I don't know who or what created it or made it connect to our worlds, but it seems like if they had made an agreement to limit their intervention in your world then they would ... not have done that, it seems like a pretty extraordinary intervention even without the books. The book prices are reasonable."

"Also, I should bring this up now, I'm using magic to speak your language and it will only last about two hours. Milliways has a permanent translation effect but it only works inside."

"I didn't prepare any language spells today but tomorrow I can prepare Share Language a few times - not enough to cover your entire party, unfortunately."

"You should check that it works before you prepare it multiple times, I think that even if I learned your language nonmagically I couldn't actually speak it, my mouth physically can't make a lot of the sounds. I was a little surprised that this spell works—on that note, I want to try teaching your awakened horses our language, I think they wouldn't have that problem and then they'd be able to communicate with you if they had this spell cast on them." Actually she'll get Fluttershy to do it, probably she will end up with more important things to do.

"I know of a technique for making spells permanent, but I don't know it by heart and all my books are back at home. Do you have that here?"

[tl;dr of the previously promised essay: Twilight is a nonstandard sorcerer/wizard gestalt that gets both prepared and spontaneous spells out of a common spells-per-day cap. I'm not sure whether she has two casting stats but she might.]

"Permanency is a known spell but it requires expensive quantities of diamond dust and a fifth circle wizard."

"It does require—but not—are diamonds very rare here?"

"...yes."

"They're not that rare in Equestria. They're one of the harder gemstones to farm, but not so much that—a Permanency would be a major expenditure."

"......well, we can't farm them, we have to mine them out of the ground or the Elemental Plane of Earth. Do you... know how to farm them...?"

"I don't know how to farm them; that's earth pony magic. You should talk to my friend Pinkie Pie, she grew up on a rock farm."

"Ugh, why?" says Pinkie Pie, in perfect Taldane. "Rock farming is boooring."

"Well, if you get them large enough they can be used to resurrect the dead."

"You can't do it the way earth ponies do it. You should try growing seed crystals in an atmosphere of 1% methane and 99% hydrogen at 800 °C and 3.9 psi in a demiplane with no gravity and looping spatial geometry, I've heard that works here."

"You can also just buy them from us," Twilight says apologetically. "—wait, you can what?!"

"- seed crystals in an atmosphere of - one percent methane and the rest 'hydrogen' at - eight hundred degrees of what? - three point nine what? - no gravity looping spatial geometry - someone write that down - you, write that down -"

Pinkie Pie does not offer clarification.

"If you aren't able to replicate, uh, whatever it is she said, a lot of ponies in Equestria would be very happy to trade with your world—or, uh, at least the factions in your world that aren't evil. You'll need to persuade our Princess to allow contact, though; she's very concerned about your world's evil gods getting into Equestria. That's one of the reasons we're stuck here."

"... also, uh, say more about the resurrecting the dead thing?"

Yeah he was not expecting to get two chances to memorize surprise diamond farming information. He ignores Twilight till he's confirmed that the random person he assigned to writing things down has succeeded insofar as that was possible and tells them to find a wizard who can copy it and give it to Lt. Sauer along with an explanation to send along to important parties.

"- I'm sorry, I've missed some of what you said."

"The main obstacle to trade between our worlds, for diamonds or other things, is that our Princess is concerned about your world's evil god situation leaking into ours, but, uh, I don't think I actually understood the evil god situation very well when I told her about it, so—is she right to be worried?"

(It occurs to her that she didn't ever check whether this man's god was evil, but probably if he served an evil god this would be—obvious somehow, right?)

"- the gods don't dwell on this plane, but they do act here, including evil ones, yes."

"Act how?"

"Principally through clerics, so I would expect the bulk of the issue to be obviated if you simply didn't permit or screened travel by Golarion natives and didn't allow anyone non-Good from your home to visit here."

"I'll tell the Princess that whenever I see her again. How do you tell if somep—I mean, someone is good? I mean, most ponies are but if they're not they're probably going to try to hide it."

"... also, did you actually say earlier that your world can resurrect the dead?"

"There are spells that detect alignment but only in sufficiently powerful people, empowered followers of gods, and outsiders and the undead. And yes, there are several spells that can raise the dead with different sizes of diamond and circle of spell trading off against different intactness and age of remains available. I can't do this personally but I have used a scroll of Raise Dead before."

"That's—I know some ponies who would be very grateful if your people could do that." She's suddenly very glad Applejack can't understand their conversation, in case it turns out not to work on ponies or something. "Our world can't do anything like that, aside from—rumors of old dark magic that most ponies won't talk about even though they think it's a myth. Sombra's empire—" She shudders.

"- this is distinct from necromancy. Resurrection spells are conjuration."

The fact that they have an established compound word for 'death magic' is concerning but not actually the most concerning thing she knows about this world. "I was assuming so," she says. "Do you know anything about what happens to people after they die? We don't—well, I don't." Celestia and Luna probably know if it's possible to know at all, but they haven't seen fit to tell Twilight.

"The souls of the dead are judged by Pharasma, then passed on to an afterlife that matches their alignment. The non-evil afterlives are reputed to be pleasant."

"... how many people go to evil afterlives?—also, Katixa was talking about someplace called 'Hell' ruled by the god of tyranny and slavery, is that—?"

"...out of all souls of every species? I would... imagine roughly a third of them... but I don't actually know, the best statistics are from a Lawful-Neutral-skewed country and even those statistics are not perfect. Hell is the Lawful Evil afterlife."

"What the fuck!!"

"Pharasma the Creator does not claim to be Good."

"If she did I'd be suspicious of your whole goodness-detecting spell—is there anyone who is good doing something about this?"

"...well, Iomedae, my goddess, is working on it, but I am not privy to the details of how it's going except insofar as it was fairly conspicuous when the country was conquered away from the forces of Hell."

"—obviously you shouldn't let the forces of Hell rule countries" (what the fuck!!) "but if a third of people go there anyway—actually, you know what, I need to talk to my friends about—all of this. One more question, though: Katixa said your world's magic would probably be able to get us home but it might be very expensive. Who would we talk to about that, and do you think we'd be able to pay them in diamonds after we made it back?"

"For that you want a Plane Shift. I'm not actually sure who there is in Westcrown - that's this city - who can cast it, apart from the archmages, but you might be important enough for archmages; the Arch-healer Naima has regular hours at the larger Temple of Abadar, and Archmage Cottonet is generally present at the Constitutional Convention, which... you are not straightforwardly admissible to but I could perhaps beg a moment of his time tomorrow on your behalf. Anyone with the ability to defend diamonds will accept them as currency."

"Alright. That sounds good. Thanks for your help, uh—oh, I'm sorry, I don't think I ever got your name."

"Select Blai Artigas. - Select means I'm a cleric of Iomedae."

"I'm Princess Twilight Sparkle—well, I've only been a princess for a few months, Celestia and Luna are the ones really in charge. These are—oops, it looks like my friends went back inside. I'll have to introduce them once I can get them a translation spell."

"... speaking of that, we're probably going to stay in Milliways, but we might want to explore the city, is it okay if we come and go via your yard?"

"I... think that should be fine... the place isn't particularly defensible should anyone take exception, but I suppose we can't move it...."

Someone is now sawing a hole in the side of the stable. They look at Blai and he nods at them and they continue.

"Alright, I can Teleport out if there's an emergency, or more likely just go inside and shut the door—it's just that your people seemed alarmed to see us and I'd like to avoid a repeat of that. Also don't forget about sending someone to relieve Katixa of door-holding duty."

"You aren't a common race. I don't confidently expect you to have trouble - if nothing else the Arch-healer has turned people into more bizarre things reincarnating them into younger yet randomly-selected forms. I am considering who to send in after Katixa, this is neither obviously within anyone's job description nor an errand that any random churchgoer could perform, and it will have to be someone who isn't likely to be needed in an emergency. ...actually, I should decide on someone sooner than later, as Ser Goés should he run into any trouble of his own can probably summon her to his -"

"You want someone to go into the portal over there?"

"...oh, I'd been wondering where you'd gotten to - yes, are you volunteering?"

"I am absolutely volunteering." Into Milliways he goes.

Inside is a bar/restaurant with exploding stars out the window, containing five little ponies and one normal horse.

"Oh, hi," says the pastel yellow one in a timid little voice. "Who are you?"

"I like to call myself the Inquirer. If I understood correctly I'm here in case the horse has to go suddenly."

"Oh, thank you! It's nice here because I can talk and there are those stars to watch but sometimes I do find myself having to go suddenly."

At this point Twilight comes back in. "Katixa, you can go now if you'd like," she says.

"Oh. What sort of things do you inquire about?"

"I think I will stay until my paladin needs me. Because I can talk. But sometimes when he needs me I teleport right to where he is! And then usually he jumps on my back and I've got to run really fast when that happens!"

"Mostly I interview people who everybody would like to know more about, so that everyone can know what they have to say without them having to talk to hundreds of people."

"... I suspect that that might not work while you're in Milliways," she tells Katixa.

"Oh, you're a reporter!" says Fluttershy. She may be slightly terrified of journalists on account of the whole incident with Photo Finish but it would be rude to let it show. "If you want to interview someone you should interview Rarity or Twilight, I'm very shy."

"Ooh, I'd love to be interviewed," says a white unicorn with a posh-sounding accent, preening her mane.

"I'm not sure if I should be publishing anything about you - pamphlets are illegal right now and I have no idea what my new boss would make of it - but I can certainly interview you pending finding that out. You're called 'Rarity'?"

"Oh no! If it wouldn't work here he might need me and I wouldn't even know!" Katixa trots out.

"Yes."

"And how did you find yourself here in this - demiplane?"

"The door to it appeared where my friend Twilight's closet was supposed to be. Princess Celestia said it was dangerous for some reason and closed it, but Discord played a...prank" (she looks very disapproving as she says this) "on us so that we ended up stuck here instead of back in our world."

"And who are those people?"

"Princess Celestia is the ruler of Equestria! She's an alicorn like Twilight, but she's a thousand years old and very wise and very powerful. She raises the sun every morning—well, in Equestria, I don't know who's responsible for the sun here."

"Discord is, uh, the Lord of Chaos. I really don't know how to explain him, except that he's very rude."

"Are they gods?"

"I'm sorry, I don't really know what a 'god' is ... uh, probably?" It sounds about right from the sense the translation magic is giving her.

"Huh! While you're stuck here what is it you mean to do with yourself?"

"Well, I always enjoy meeting new people, but I need a spell to speak your language, so I'm not sure how much of that I'll get to do."

"You don't think you'll be here long enough to learn Chelish the long way?"

"Is that what your language is called? I don't know, I might. But your language sounds so different from ours, I think it would be hard to learn." Has he not noticed that she's a horse.

Well, dragons can do it. "It's called Chelish, yes, and this - well, outside the demiplane - is the city of Westcrown, capital of Cheliax."

"Well, at least I'm stuck somewhere fashionable. What's Cheliax like?"

"...recovering from having been controlled by the king of Hell. But we're the most literate country in the world, I hear, so there's that."

"I don't know what 'Hell' is but it kind of sounds like the sort of thing best left to the Princesses. Who rules Cheliax now?"

"That'd be Queen Aspexia III, she and her adventuring party conquered it. Is there much war where you're from?"

"... oh, no, not in a very long time. Well, there was that one thing with Nightmare Moon ... and Sombra ... but we took care of those pretty quickly."

"What happened with Nightmare Moon and Sombra?"

"Nightmare Moon—uh, Princess Luna—is Celestia's sister, a long time ago she got jealous of her sister and tried to take over Equestria, so Celestia banished her to the moon for a thousand years. Last summer she came back and tried to bring eternal night to Equestria, but my friends and I learned to use the Elements of Harmony to, uh—turn her back into Princess Luna? Come to think of it I'm not exactly what sure what happened there, but Luna is still around and isn't evil anymore."

"The Elements of Harmony?"

"Um, I'm actually not sure how to explain that—Twilight?"

"Yeah?"

"Can you explain the Elements of Harmony to this gentleman?"

"I can, but...hmm. Actually, that's a state secret. Sorry," she says to the interviewer.

"No need to apologize. And Sombra?"

"Sombra was a—I think 'necromancer' is the word your language has for it, who ruled the Crystal Empire a long time ago. He tried to come back recently. Unsuccessfully."

"... Rarity, can I talk to you for a second?"

"Excuse me a moment, please," she says to her interviewer.

"Of course."

Can she, now that she's an alicorn, cast an antimagic field powerful enough to nullify the Milliways translation effect itself and let her speak to Rarity in secrecy? Maybe, but she's not here to show off. Much simpler just to pull Rarity outside.

"There are evil gods here who have human servants. I doubt that man is specifically one of the human servants but they can certainly read a newspaper. I don't think we're going to be able to hide our existence, but I would like the evil gods not to find out about our unexplained ability to repeatedly handle problems way too big for us in the span of half an hour until after it's too late for them to do anything about it. Likewise the fact that diamonds, which are apparently absurdly valuable for magic here, are comparatively not scarce in Equestria. And—probably half a dozen similar things that we don't know about yet."

She lets out a dramatic sigh. "Alright, fine."

She goes back inside to the Inquirer. "Twilight says I shouldn't tell adventure stories because we don't want to reveal our capabilities. Want to hear about Equestrian fashion?" She can probably come up with a treatment of it that avoids mentioning the absurd quantities of gemstones.

Elorri gets home from his errands, greets Katixa, and is very surprised that she's pulling him toward the portal and has to make her stop and confirm with Select Artigas that as far as he knows his horse hasn't been enchanted and there's just a portal there now and in the associated demiplane Katixa can talk. Elorri lets Katixa pull him in when she resumes trying to do this.

"Hello!" says a tiny purple unicorn. "Are you Katixa's paladin?"

(Twilight has spent the last while discussing their situation with her friends, which discussion ended with the fairly unanimous conclusion that, while they should prioritize getting home and definitely not try to fight any evil gods unless Princess Celestia says it's a good idea, they should push back if Celestia tries to totally cut off contact with Golarion. It seems like they can really do a lot of good here, and the risks seem to be at least possible to mitigate.)

"- yes, I'm Katixa's paladin."

"I can talk! Elorri, listen, I can talk here! I can make noises and try to mean stuff when I make the noises and then words come out! You can understand me, right?"

"Yes, I can understand you." He pets her nose. "That's very cool that you can talk, is there anything you wanted to say specifically?"

"...not really! You're pretty good at holding up all of a conversation! I just think it's neat."

"I'm Twilight Sparkle—uh, I'll leave you alone if you want to get caught up. It would be awful if I couldn't talk to my friends."

Katixa may not have anything specific to say but she is excited about trying out being a chatterbox to her bemusedly affectionate paladin. They go find a corner and chat. At one point Katixa raises her voice a bit to announce that she definitely knows without having to be told that just because she can talk now is no reason to tell Elorri anything that somebody told her because she couldn't talk at the time, That Would Be Wrong, and Elorri tells her he is so proud of her.

After a while it becomes clear that actually Katixa is delighted to have the important job of standing in Milliways holding the door while Elorri doesn't need her to ride across the countryside or charge into battle with him, so the Inquirer can be dismissed.

He hands his transcript to Select Artigas on the way out of the church complex. "But do let me know if it's ever feasible? Or talk to the Archduchess, I'm working for her now."

"We'll see how it pans out."

If she'd known that the Inquirer was reporting to Blai she wouldn't have cut Rarity's interview short! Blai is not a servant of an evil god and he should know about their capabilities! Well, it's probably still better to tell him, or one of the paladins, directly.

Milliways doesn't exactly have a day/night cycle, but the sun eventually sets outside, and it's probably well after sunset relative to the time they got up that morning. Eventually they figure out how to rent a room and head up to it.

They share a room; in Ponyville they all have separate houses, but ponies are still herd animals at heart, and in a new and rather frightening place there's something deeply comforting about all sleeping in a big pile.

They will all find themselves, then, apparently in the throne room in Canterlot, in the presence of a certain alicorn princess with power over dreams.

"Princess Luna." She does not actually feel very much like like bowing right now.

“Princess Twilight.” If she notices the sudden lack of deference she doesn’t show it. “How are you and your friends doing? We’re working on trying to bring you home after Discord’s unfortunate prank. It shouldn’t be too much longer.”

“What happens to ponies when we die?”

“… that’s…not something it’s wise to tell everypony…”

“Is Equestria in fact connected to the horrible afterlife system that sends a third of everyone to horrible torture dimensions?”

“I really don’t think I should—Twilight, you’ll find out when—”

“Princess.”

“Are. There. Ponies. In. Hell.”

“… it is not in theory impossible.”

“I do expect that, in reality, there are not. Most departed ponies choose to be reincarnated in Equestria, and those that choose to pass on into the River are informed of the reality of judgement before they choose—and, also, there are very few Evil ponies to begin with, and fewer still that die a normal death.” Most ponies who would plausibly have gone to Hell are instead statues in Celestia’s garden, but she’s not going to say that.

That’s…not the worst possible thing. “Thank you for telling us. Are you and Celestia able to empower ponies to cast the resurrection spell?”

“If we had made different choices long ago, perhaps. But as things are, no. We did not think it wise—”

“With due respect, Princess, I’m not sure you have any idea what’s wise, when it comes to ponies bein’ dead.”

… ouch. However, that’s actually not where she was going with that at all.

“—what I meant to say was that we did not think it wise to build a world where we were worshipped as gods. Whether it would be wise to make resurrection generally available is—a different issue.”

This is a slightly ridiculous thought but now that it’s occurred to her she has to ask—“Now that I’m an alicorn, can I empower clerics?”

“… not yet.”

Eventually, then. She’ll keep that in mind.

“The clerics here can cast it, they just need diamonds. Equestria has so many diamonds, compared with here.”

Luna sees where they’re going with this, and she doesn’t at all blame them, but no, actually. “Yes, Celestia and I made Equestria a place where it’s possible to produce diamonds and other gemstones easily, because they’re useful for magic in general. But I fear that the gods of Golarion would take offense, if we—”

Meanwhile, downstairs, the door swings open. "Horse day! Yes! Love horse day at Milliways." A burning horse clatters inside on the bright bell tones of mithril horseshoes. She could fly, but Agnika likes making noise.