Harià's fleeing from Cheliax. The alarm has gone off, and perhaps all the other Badgers are dead.
Indeed not; you couldn't reach this place with an ordinary Teleport at all, even if you were an archmage, but she's here anyway.
She's in a forest. It is not yet obviously not a forest in Cheliax. It's a pleasant, moonlit night.
She's almost out of spells, is the thing. Her little spellbook hangs from a leather holster over her shoulders- but if there's trees, there's dirt, and if there's dirt, you can burrow. And in many places, and in many times, lairs has been...safety.
She looks quickly around for a suitable place.
Harià digs down into the soft earth, her claws, glistening with a permanent spell, opening up a little burrow in the earth.
It looks cozy. She beds down to rest.
And a little while after sunrise, Fluttershy heads into the forest to make her daily check on the animals there. She notices the new burrow and sticks her muzzle into the entrance. "Oh, hello new friend!" she calls. "Where did you come from?"
An Entity!, Haria thinks. "Hello Entity! I had a Teleportation Accident. It so Happened that I was reading a Scroll, and it turned out to Go Wrong!"
Fluttershy's putative new friend has empty eyesockets, with bright arcane sparks glowing inside them, and very scraggly, but well-brushed teeth.
She pulls her head back from the opening of the burrow, partly so that Harià can exit but mostly in surprise. She can communicate with most creatures, but their responses aren't usually so—verbal—and she was definitely not expecting Harià to describe an accident with a spell that, as far as she knows, only four ponies in Equestria can cast.
Nonetheless, the poor creature is probably lost and terrified. "Oh no," she says. "Do you need help getting home? I don't know very much about magic, but Twilight does."
(She barely notices the empty eyesockets or the various other indicators that Harià is biologically dead.)
"I shouldn't Go Home, but Other Destinations may well Beckon!" She pokes her nose out of the lair and looks rather doubtfully at the bright light filtering though the branches above.
"I am called Harià. Wizard, Badger, Undying. What is Your Name and Type if I might Ask?
The sun burns Harià.
Not very much; with only her nose poking out into the light she won't feel it at all through her innate resistance to damage, but as she emerges further it will definitely become noticeable. She is well shielded, and third circle, and Equestria's sun will not kill her as quickly as it heals the living creatures on which it shines. But it will, if she stays in it even a few minutes, kill her nonetheless.
"I am from Cheliax, in Golarion, in Avistan" She pauses, and looks at her interlocutor. "In Pharasma's Creation."
"Where is this?"
“You’re near the edge of the Everfree Forest, near Ponyville. In Equestria. Who is ‘Pharasma’?”
Harià peeks out a bit further from her burrow.
"She Created My Universe, or So I Hear. What is the Name of This Planet and Sun? Ours is Mataras, but I can tell This is not the Same One, as This one Stings a bit"
“I don’t know what a ‘planet’ is…the sun shouldn’t hurt you. Celestia’s sun is supposed to heal all creatures…”
“I’m going to go get my friend Twilight. She knows a lot more about magic and faraway places than I do.”
"A Magic Expert is Always Good! In the Meantime I will Prepare some Spells!"
Haria pulls in her nose.
This one is purple and has a horn as well as wings. “Hi!” she says, poking her muzzle into Harià’s burrow. “Fluttershy says that you’re a wizard. I haven’t met a badger that could do magic before.”
She withdraws her head and turns to her friend as soon as she gets a look at Harià herself.
“… Fluttershy, this badger is dead.”
Her voice lowers. “There’s dark magic that can reanimate a corpse and make it appear to be alive, but it isn’t actually alive. This…hasn’t been seen in Equestria in a thousand years. A lot of books think it’s a myth, but it isn’t. If someone’s using it again, even just on badgers, that’s…very bad.”
"Your Books are Somewhat Right! It is True that I am an Undying Lady Badger! But While there are in certain Places some Unfair Predjudice against The Undying, the Modern Up-to Date Badger does not Fear such Things. I Imagine it is the Same for Your Kind!"
She pauses. "At any Rate I am not From this Solar System."
… while she’s pretty sure that she’s not Unfairly Prejudiced against unlife and that it is, rather, just actually a horrifying abomination, the fact that this particular abomination can speak in complete sentences and has not, yet, attempted to do harm to anypony here is enough for her not to immediately put it down.
“How…did you get here?” She’s not sure what a ‘solar system’ is but the obvious interpretation is that Harià is claiming to be from somewhere so far away that it’s not under Celestia’s sun. “And how were you made, uh, ‘undying’?”
"My Friend Eriape had given me a Teleport Scroll, which I Read! Only too late did I Realize The Scroll had been Substituted by some Hostile or Well-Meaning Force! And instead of Teleporting to my Desired Destination, I appeared in the Forest Above."
"Then when I arrived I Dug this Hole to Rest in. It was not Here Before."
"... Fluttershy, why don't we go check on some of your other friends," Twilight suggests, and then, as soon as they're out of Harià's earshot—
"Don't get attached to her. She seems innocent enough right now, but unliving creatures—aren't. They can't feel love or empathy, and a lot of them are actually in horrible pain all the time. I'm going to ask the Princess before I do anything, but we're probably going to have to..." She doesn't want to actually say it.
"This is much worse than that. Some kinds of unliving creatures can turn ponies into more of them, and there's no known way to turn an unliving creature living again."
"By then it will be too late. Maybe not for everyone, but for you, and—I'm not willing to take that risk. Also, even if she's telling the truth about being from very far away, somepony* made her the way she is and sent her here, and they're definitely evil."
(*) Twilight has, currently, no reason to believe that Eriape is not a pony.
"—oh, right, it would, if her life-force is inverted then Celestia's universal healing spell would have inverted effects on her—I'm honestly not sure I can do anything about that, but I'll see."
They have, by now, circled back around to Harià's burrow. Twilight sticks her muzzle back into the entrance. "I'm going to try to do something about the sun so that you can come out of your burrow if you want," she says. "Be careful, our sun will destroy you if you spend too much time in it."
With a few days of research she could probably come up with a spell to do the thing she actually needs—the Cloudwalker spell is clearly a special case of a generalized adaptation-to-the-local-environment pattern that she could probably make a generalized form of...it would require a lot more power than Cloudwalker but she could probably cast it anyway...but she doesn't have a few days. There is, however, something else that she, as a Princess of Equestria, can do, even if in some senses it's vast overkill.
She taps her nascent connection to the local fabric of reality and temporarily suspends the day/night cycle in a hundred-yard area between here and Fluttershy’s cottage. Birds stop singing in confusion as the sun appears to fall back below the horizon and stays there.
Haria sticks get nose out, then, bit by bit, she emerges fully, and shakes off the dirt. "Gosh that is a Lot of Area of Effect, Not that its Not Appreciated! What is the Circle and How long will that Last?"
“It should last until regular nightfall, but I think I can figure out something better by the next sunrise.” If they decide to let Harià keep existing, that is. “What’s a ‘circle’?—I mean, I know what a circle is but I don’t think that’s what you mean.”
“Shh, don’t tell anyone. I wasn’t actually sure I could do it until I did.”
"Where I come from Spells have Differing Topological Genus. Higher Genus usually means More Powerful, and we call the Genus of the Spell its Circle. I can cast Third so I am Third."
"Oh, we have that. The most powerful spell I can cast is a six but that, uh, wasn't a spell, it's something I can only do because I'm a Princess of Equestria. Princess Celestia raises the sun over all of Equestria every morning but I'm not that powerful."
An Important Pony. "It is Very Impressive Nevertheless. Are you Able to Trade Spells? I like Extradimensional Effects and also Flying."
“Maybe later.” If they don’t decide to kill her. “But right now I need to go talk to Princess Celestia. Also, I don’t need a spell to fly.” She spreads her wings.
"Okay!"
Haria wanders over to investigate the edge of the effect, then returns to Fluttershy.
"She is Very Powerful."
"Oh, yes, she is. Princess Celestia taught her herself."
"Do you need anything? What do Undying Badgers eat?" Hopefully the answer is not 'ponies'.
"We don't Have to Eat, but I will not Turn Down a Fresh Mole. I do not Formally Need to Drink or Breathe Either and this is Very Useful for Undersea Adventures! There are Many Advantages to Being Undying!"
She looks at Fluttershy.
"What do you Eat?"
"Oh, a lot of different things, but mostly plants. Sometimes milk or eggs, but we never eat meat. There are other creatures in Equestria that do, though.”
"Large Cursorial Predator Bird, approximately Four Times your Height. Nonsapient. Often used as Mounts."
"Oh. Interesting."
She pauses for a second.
"Do you like being Undying?"
"I used to Be a Regular Badger, of the Nonsapient Type. I much Prefer being What I am Now. Being Undying is Somewhat Uncomfortable, but it Comes with Many Advantages."
Haria pauses, and wiggles in thought.
"I do."
"Twilight says that being unliving is very painful. Maybe you aren't actually that, but—hmm. If you could be sapient, but alive, would you want that?"
"Do Ponies die from Old Age? Are you Immortal? In our World, Living Badgers die Young, in Mere Years. The Great Lady Eriape had been Working on It, but it was a Difficult Project."
She sighs.
"For Some Creatures, Being Undying is Very Painful, or so I Understand. For us it is Merely Uncomfortable."
"Ponies live about a hundred years. Well, except the Princesses, Celestia and Luna are about a thousand years old. I don't know if they'll eventually die or not." It occurs to her—she hasn't otherwise been prompted to think about it—that Twilight is now going to outlive the rest of them by a long, long time. "... oh no."
“Oh, I just realized how sad Twilight will be when all of her friends are gone.”
"She could Make you Undying Too! I have the Spell to make People like Me, though I can't Cast it Yet."
