"WE DID NOT SAY IT WAS A GOOD IMPERSONATION."

"NONETHELESS, WE HAVE NOT BEEN SEEN IN EQUESTRIA IN A THOUSAND YEARS, AND THERE ARE FEW WHO REMEMBER OUR TRUE APPEARANCE. AND THERE ARE NOT MANY ALICORNS...WHY DOST THOU WISH TO IMPERSONATE AN ALICORN AT ALL?"

"I was a queen," she says, "where I came from."

"AH," she says, "WE KNOW WHO THOU ART. WE SUPPOSE WE ARE NOT ONE TO CHASTISE THEE FOR THINE ENVY."

"...MAY WE ASK THEE A PERSONAL QUESTION?"

"You may if you don't shout it, though I don't promise an answer...also, are you using the royal 'we', or does Celestia also want to know?"

"Sorry," says Luna, much more quietly. "We did not speak aloud for so long, it is difficult to conTROL OUR—sorry. Our volume. And no, it's just, uh, me."

"How do you endure it?—the shame of what you've done," she says, even more quietly.

"That's easy," she says. "I don't feel any. If Celestia or Iomedae think I've done something shameful, that's their problem."

"I almost destroyed Equestria," says Luna, her voice now barely a whisper. "I don't deserve—"

She laughs. "Deserve? No one deserves anything, least of all what happens to them," she says. "Would you like me to permanently dispel that illusion?"

"You can't—"

Vision of Hell.

(They're in the corner of the ballroom, but still in the ballroom. Everypony within fifty feet immediately runs screaming, which triggers a wave of panic even among those who can't see the illusion.)

Luna flinches but doesn't scream. "I know this place exists," she says. "It doesn't make me better because some powers elsewhere are worse."

"Not my point. You haven't been there; I have. It's already heresy in Asmodeus' Church to teach that the damned deserve their suffering, but if one is ever in doubt, a minute in Avernus will cure them. We will all suffer enough, in the end, no matter what we do to avoid it; it's foolish to add to it."

"Even if, hypothetically, I thought that some things I had done in the past had been wrong, I would not bother to regret them. Hell laughs at your regret." The last sentence is an Infernal proverb, quoted in the original language.

Oh no the poor thing.

"Enough!" shouts Celestia, rapidly moving towards them, and the Vision of Hell vanishes. "Get away from my sister."

"It's okay," says Luna. "We were having a very, uh, interesting conversation." A very something conversation, at least.

"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."