(They have not.)

"Okay. Twilight, this is possibly the worst night of the entire year to have a private visit with the Princess. The entire reason anyone goes to these events is to have the monarch acknowledge their existence for one round, and there will be thousands of people who feel they're owed such a thing. It's miserable. When I was Queen of Cheliax, I used to go to all the Palace social events in disguise; it was the only way I could enjoy myself at all. Celestia definitely does not have time for you."

"Fluttershy, what kind of garden is this? Does the princess import rare animals from all over the world, or are we just talking about a royal deer park—you're herbivores, why do you even have a deer park—nevermind. And if it's the latter, why do you care? You live next to an actual forest with manticores and fucking dragons."

"Applejack, nobles don't eat apple pie."

"Dash, do the Wonderbolts even know who you are?"

"Pinkie, people don't go to galas to have fun. At least not your kind of fun." Abrogail's kind of fun, perhaps, but Abrogail's kind of fun is mostly illegal here.

"And Rarity, in spite of your name and entire personality, you are a commoner. If a nobleborn stallion shows interest in you, run. Or at least know what you're getting into."

Twilight sighs. "You're probably right. Still, it would be rude to the Princess not to go after I asked her for so many tickets."

"Actually, the dragons and stuff scare a lot of the animals in the Everfree Forest, so there's not very many of them, except for the ones that stay with me. The royal gardens have every peaceful creature in Equestria, great and small."

"Don't eat apple pie? That's crazy! They will once they taste my family's recipe!"

"Of course the Wonderbolts know who I am! I won the Best Young Fliers Contest last year!"

"That's silly of them. Maybe they just need someone to show them how much fun a real party is!"

"My Prince Charming won't care who my parents are. I'm just as proper and ladylike as any princess."

In Cheliax, it was actually relatively easy (relative to most places in Golarion) for a commoner to enter the nobility by service to the Crown or marriage, in large part because the death rate among Chelish nobility was so high. There are actually quite a few romance-novel heroines who manage to marry above their station by outscheming and/or murdering their rivals.

This is not Cheliax, for better or worse, and Rarity is not a Chelish romance-novel heroine. Unfortunately, Abrogail can't really just explain this to her.

"Hey Twi, how are we gonna get there?"

"I've been working on these spells that turn an apple into a carriage and mice into horses..."

Speaking of Chelish folk tales about common girls marrying into nobility by murdering their rivals, what the fuck?

(She's distantly aware that the Chelish version of that story was modified from an original that presumably contained less murder, but she has no idea what it contained instead.)

Also, there's apparently a species whose name translates as 'horses' rather than 'ponies'. Are they sentient? Again, what the fuck.

"I can take five in a Teleport," she says. "Figure out among yourselves who has to ride in the Bag of Holding."

"But you weren't even invited!"

"I wasn't here when tickets were handed out," she says. "Besides, I'm still foreign royalty. I don't need a ticket."

Teleport.

They land by the side of the road about a hundred yards from the castle gates, near the back of a long queue of elegantly dressed ponies. Spike climbs out of Twilight's Saddlebag of Holding. (Rainbow Dash elected just to fly.)

"Whoa, you all look amazing!" Spike says when he sees the assembled ponies.

"I can't believe we're finally here! This is going to be the best night ever!"

Suddenly, music starts to play from no apparent source.

"At the Gala!" she starts to sing.

"At the Gala!" replies a chorus of ponies who weren't there a moment ago, without missing a beat.

Did they plan this, or is this just a generalization of whatever supernatural ability Pinkie Pie has?

Fluttershy takes off into the air.

"At the Gala! in the garden,
I'm going to see them all—"

Yeah okay.

"I'll see you around, girls," says Abrogail, and dimdoors inside the castle's outer walls.

She finds herself in a garden decorated with a dozen or so life-size statues of ponies. The only other non-stone pony in the garden is a sky-blue alicorn standing by the opposite wall. He makes brief eye contact with Abrogail, then moves out of her line of sight and isn't visible again.

However, one of the statues looks rather familiar.

What.

Are...are all of the statues Celestia's petrified enemies? She didn't think Good people did that.

Well, she can test that. Not on the demon-looking thing over there, obviously. Maybe on this armored pegasus with her wings outstretched.

Stone to Flesh.