"Be that as it may," says Celestia, glancing around at the chaos in the ballroom, slowly beginning to die down, "I was looking forward to some more excitement at this year's Gala, but this was not what I had in mind."

She looks at Abrogail. "You have, genuinely, made progress, and I don't want to do this. But I don't want to find out what the next disaster is going to be either."

oh no oh no oh no

There is a brilliant and incomprehensible flash of magic, and then Abrogail's Arcane Sight stops producing data, and she can no longer cast spells.

She does not scream. She has been through the fires of Hell and returned in triumph, and she does not scream.

But she wants to.

She tries, on instinct, to Teleport out, and then, when that doesn't work, still does not scream, and instead turns and walks out of the ballroom, clinging desperately to the wreckage of her pride.

Luna follows her out into the gardens.

"I'm sorry," she says. "My sister can be very—protective of her little ponies. As she calls them."

"Pretending Hell doesn't exist isn't protecting anypony! They can still go there, even if the so-called Princess blocks people from scrying them!"

"I genuinely don't think Equestria sends anyone to Hell. Most people choose to be reincarnated as ponies rather than find the River, and the few people a century that would actually be judged Evil by interplanar standards almost always get petrified, or, uh—" Banished to the moon.

(She has enough Sense Motive to finish that sentence as well.)

"Even so, it's, uh—at home even Good people would say—I can't predict exactly what Iomedae would say about it but I can predict that She wouldn't like it."

"That ignoring it doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and if Celestia's not going to do anything about it, she should at least let other ponies have the opportunity to try?" she says, a bit sadly. "Yeah. I knew someone like that once."

Well, that's informative. Here she is not saying anything. Can she Bluff a minor god? Yes she can.

"Yeah, something like that."

A drop of liquid falls from the sky and lands on Abrogail's nose.

On closer examination, it's chocolate milk.

"What the fuck."

"What—?" She notices the milk rain. "Shit."

"Follow me," she says, and starts to run towards the statue section of the gardens.

Through the trees Abrogail catches a brief glimpse of the alicorn she saw before, heading away from the gardens in a different direction—blue with an orange mane and a cutie mark of a setting sun.

"Who is that?" she asks Luna.

"Who is who?" she asks. "I didn't see anyone."

"Blue male alicorn, lighter shade of blue than you."

"There aren't any male alicorns. I mean, it's not impossible in principle, but there aren't any. Might be a foreign dignitary whose natural form looks sufficiently alien that he'd rather be a pony for the night."

They reach the statue garden. Discord is, predictably, gone.

We have a situation, she says to her sister over their permanent telepathic bond, then teleports herself and Abrogail to Celestia's private audience room.

Celestia isn't there, but she teleports in accompanied by Twilight and her friends a moment later.

"I noticed," she replies.

—followed by Valiant Victory flying in through an open window a moment after that.

Um.

Yeah 'um' is right, she's just going to ignore that situation until the emergency is dealt with, though.