"Don't worry," says a deep voice. It's speaking Infernal. "You aren't in Hell. Except, I suppose, insofar as Hell is wherever I am."

Abrogail can't see the source of the voice. She can't see anything—well, she could see her hooves in front of her face, if she put them there; it isn't dark. There's just nothing to see.

The obvious inference about the identity of this person is overwhelmed by panicked speculation about whether getting values-inverted invalidates her contract with Asmodeus. It—might? No one considers Zon-Kuthon to be the same god as Dou-Bral.

Then, of course, she remembers the past—however long it's been—of her subjective experience, and realizes that this is probably still just Discord messing with her. Not really worth getting her magic back, especially seeing as she doesn't currently seem able to use magic.

Something like a spotlight illuminating happens, and Discord's petrified form is visible nearby.

"Discord is right here," says the voice. "He was never even unpetrified. For a being of supposedly eldritch power, he's surprisingly easy to imitate. All one has to do is say a bunch of stuff that makes absolutely no sense."

Given that, if this isn't Discord, it's Mephistopheles, she has no reason to believe that—and if it is Mephistopheles, she'll never know one way or the other.

"What do you want?" she asks.

Another spotlight illuminates, and it's revealed that the source of the voice does at least resemble an archdevil.

"I'm not Discord," says Mephistopheles. "I swear it. Normally, you'd be right, I'd never tell you. But this will be very tedious if you don't think it's real."

That's still not information, but she understands now that she is instructed to believe it.

"I came here," says the maybe-archdevil, "to offer you a way not to go to Hell."

She's not enough of an idiot to actually believe that, but—"How?"

"Asmodeus may rule Hell, but I am Hell. Should He default on his obligations to the other gods, His rule will end. The demise of prophecy on Golarion has made certain of these obligations much more taxing than He ever expected them to be when He agreed to them."

She's almost tempted to believe that; it makes sense of so much that's otherwise bizarre: the absurd amount that Hell (well, Asmodeus) was willing to spend on the defense of Cheliax, the strange way Aspexia was acting when they got here—she believed Mephistopheles had already won and she was in His Hell, didn't she? He probably would torment His rival's high priestess by making her believe she was in some twisted version of Nirvana.

"The fall of Cheliax has already pushed Asmodeus dangerously close to default. If you can disrupt His remaining operations on Golarion sufficiently to cause Him to actually cede Hell, I will ensure that, if you do come into My possession, you will be permitted to leave—or, if you prefer, be made a greater devil with your memories and personality intact and the minimum possible amount of suffering."

There are a couple of problems with that. (Well, it's Mephistopheles, so obviously there are problems. But there are a couple of obvious problems.)

"One, you can't offer that. My soul is owned by Asmodeus directly, as Aspexia so very specifically pointed out to me." Apparently she anticipated this situation.

"Two, I don't want to be a greater devil. I want Hell to stop torturing people."

He laughs. "Oh, right, you're Chaotic Good now. An unintended side effect of what I had to do to get you to this point." (It was actually the whole point of freeing Discord.) "That's a rather more expensive request than one soul, but perhaps there's something I can do." (It's actually quite cheap, up to a point; some changes He planned to make anyway, and others He's already sold to other allies.)

"As for your prior obligations, you really have no idea how full of holes every contract comprehensible by mortals is. I'll tell you how to get out of it, as part of our deal."

"And three, You are the god of deceptive compacts. I'm not agreeing to anything until I've talked this over with a lawyer." Assuming she can afford* one willing to offer advice on dealing with Mephistopheles other than 'don't'.

(*) Wait, she has infinite diamonds. Nevermind.

"That's permissible in theory," He says. "Even for Me, this game isn't really any fun when it's this mismatched. What isn't permissible is for Iomedae to find out about any of this. You may, if you wish, appoint one Lawful Evil outsider of your choice, appropriately sworn to secrecy, as your attorney; you will not otherwise be able to speak of your dealings with Me at all. I cast the Geas before you ever regained consciousness."

Luckily she does know one Lawful Evil outsider that Mephistopheles probably doesn't, that she probably can trust to look out for her interests (at least insofar as she has any idea what those are right now)—

"You know, I am reading your mind," He says. "I'll allow it. It's cheating, but I am, after all, the god of that."

"One last question: what obligations of Asmodeus, exactly, are You referring to?"

"Monitoring Golarion for Rovagug's escape," He says, and kicks her out of the mindscape.

Um.

Was that real? If it was, it's probably the most important thing that's ever happened. Unfortunately Mephistopheles is constitutionally incapable of not leaving people hopelessly confused about the nature of reality. If that even was Mephistopheles, though the fact that she isn't sure is actually evidence in favor.

Well...she should probably...figure out what happened to Twilight and her friends? And Discord. Containing one of the epistemic horror entities might help her confusion a little bit.

"There she is!"

Twilight and party, as it happens, are rounding a corner in the hedge maze, approaching the spot where Abrogail is laying on the ground.

"Stay back," warns Twilight. "She used to be very bad. Discord could have made her even worse."

The ponies start to get into formation.

"No—wait—"

Obviously that's just what an evil Abrogail would say, and it's not like this will hurt her on her path to redemption.

FRIENDSHIP

Abrogail presents a rather more complicated case to the Elements of Harmony than most people.

Harmonizing an Equestrian villain is usually a matter of removing the influence of dark magic, as with Nightmare Moon, or turning them to stone until the stars align for their redemption, as with Discord. Against a truly irredeemable being they would—well, you'll see. But Abrogail is none of these things. She is, right now, Good—but only under the influence of drastic nonconsensual mind alteration, which is definitely not harmonious. Neither is making someone Evil. 

In the end, however, the reality is that while Discord flipped her alignment, the things he showed her were the truth, and the Elements won't make her forget them. Her alignment aura changes back to Lawful Evil. Her desire to do something about Hell doesn't change. Even if she were perfectly selfish—which she isn't, when she thinks about it—she's one of the people going there.

"Are you okay? What happened to you?"

"No, but there's nothing anypony can do about it. And I'd really rather not talk about it." She tried to say 'I'm not allowed to talk about it', which is more the truth, but it turns out Mephistopheles won't let her.

Twilight knows enough about Cheliax, now, to have guessed that Abrogail really hasn't ever been okay, but this is the first time she's heard her admit it. She's really not sure if that's a good sign or a bad one.

"Okay. Well, if you change your mind, that's what friends are for," she says.

No, friendship is not actually going to solve this one.

"I need to talk to the Princess," she says.

"We were just headed back to the castle."

She sets off up the garden path after the other ponies. "What happened to Discord?"

"We turned him back to stone. He claimed he'd be back in a season and a half, whatever that means."

"Four and a half months?"

"Nopony who was trying to be understood would say it that way, but—"

"Yeah. Did Celestia but him back on public display?"

"Hold on. He was where?"

"In the statue garden, where anyone could release him with one sixth-circle spell—the other statues are people too. I checked."

That's dumb and also kind of fucked up. "I'm sure the Princess had her reasons," she says.

And then they're at the doors of the throne room. The faint sound of shouting is audible from within, but it's hard to make out any words.

One of the guards knocks loudly on the doors. The shouting dies instantly, and the doors open slightly. "The Bearers of the Elements of Harmony!" the guard announces.

Said ponies, plus Abrogail, file into the room.

It's kind of obvious who was shouting at the Princess, since she's the only other one in the room.

This was entirely predictable. She's a bit disappointed she didn't get to watch.

"Well done, my little ponies," says Celestia. "Discord won't trouble Equestria again, thanks to you. I hope you've learned some valuable lessons about friendship along the way."

"Thank you, Princess," says Twilight, bowing. "I've learned that if you keep dangerous villains petrified in a public garden, somepony might unpetrify them in the middle of the Grand Galloping Gala."

Celestia looks uneasy. "Well, yes," she says. "I suppose that's true. But that isn't really a lesson about friendship, is it?"

"Oh, I also learned that your friends will help you stay true to who you are, even when aforementioned villains mind control you into not that. But knowing that in advance would only have solved this slightly faster; keeping Discord's statue in a shielded vault would have prevented it altogether."

"Twilight, that may be true, but there are things you don't—"

"You know," interrupts Abrogail, "I've been to a place where people decorate their gardens with their petrified enemies. It's called Hell."

Now, that's really not fair at all—but she does understand how it must look, and, unfortunately, there's no way out out this without revealing more of the plan than is really wise at this point.

She's going to anyway, because if Twilight and her friends don't trust her, this is all for nothing.

"Discord isn't my enemy," she says. "None of the statues are. Most of them, like Valiant Victory, asked to be turned to stone, that they might live to a day that Equestria needs them again. Discord—didn't, but if I didn't believe he was capable of good, I would have destroyed him, or banished him forever from Equestria. I didn't, because I know he can be redeemed. I was just waiting for the ponies who can actually do it."

"You mean us," says Applejack skeptically.

"But...we didn't redeem him. We just turned him back to stone."

"Not yet, my little ponies," says the Princess. "But you will. In truth, he wasn't supposed to return quite this soon. Even I cannot see the future perfectly."

"Hold up," says Rainbow Dash. "You can see the future?"

Yes, didn't she just go through this during Discord's First Decision Theory Lesson For Small Ponies—nevermind. "Not in the way you're imagining," she says. "I rarely know which future will come to pass, though some things are more certain than others. I had known for nearly a thousand years, for example, that the next bearers of the Elements of Harmony would be six ponies who got their cutie marks in the same moment, bound by fate before they ever met. Identifying which six ponies, and arranging for you to actually become friends, was my doing. And, I suppose, my sister's."

"I would have told you," says the Princess, "but, in fact, if I had, it wouldn't have worked. You had to make friends with the other Bearers for friendship's sake, not just to save the world—or impress me."

"And I'm glad I did," says Twilight, "but I think, nonetheless, that I would like to know about all the other things you've had planned for me for a thousand years without telling me. Pinkie Pie once said something about me 'ascending', and I ignored it at the time, but—"

"Yes. You will be, one day, the next Princess of Equestria."

"Wait, what?"

"That's a thing you can do?"

"I'd assumed it wasn't," says Abrogail, "since the version of you back home is a god and you're not."

"Yeah, about that—"

"Twilight," says Celestia suddenly, "I told you the truth because you asked me to, but it's also true that you weren't ready to hear it yet. The plan was not meant to come to fruition for some time. Please don't, because I told you sooner, do something that would disrupt it." (Twilight understands decision theory now, right?)

She understood, even before Discord's little game, the concept of not making people regret telling you things, but, really, the thing that Celestia needs to regret is not telling her much sooner.

"Of course not," she says. "I just...need to think about it. And I have a lot more questions."

"Later, my little pony," says the Princess. "It's very late; soon it will be time for me to raise the sun already. There will be time for all your questions tomorrow."

"Okay," says Twilight. "Tomorrow." She is, in fact, very tired.

"Princess, may I speak to you in private?" Abrogail interjects. "It'll be brief." Possibly very brief; she's not sure how much Mephistopheles will even let her say.

If Celestia is surprised by this she doesn't show it. "Yes," she says. "Twilight, can you show your friends to their rooms? I've had your things brought up already."

"Yes; good night, Princess."

After another round of good-nights, everypony but Celestia and Abrogail turns and leaves the throne room.

"You told me," says Abrogail when all the other ponies are gone, "that I would be allowed to leave Equestria if I wanted."

This is a genuine surprise; Abrogail had seemed, recently, to be adapting quite well. One could almost have forgotten that she used to torture people to death for fun. Is Discord to blame?—no, Twilight and her friends used the Elements of Harmony on Abrogail; that should have removed any lingering Discordian influence.

Are the Elements of Harmony to blame? They could be.

"Yes, I did. I did not, when I took you in, agree to be your jailer—but I did promise my friend that you would stay out of Asmodeus' reach, so—there must be some limits to where you can go."

"That's going to be a problem."

"Why?"

"I doubt I can overthrow Him from out of His reach."

What??

No, seriously, what?

This would have been totally expected from Valiant Victory, who did, actually, have a convincing argument that she in particular, if not ponies in general, was being wronged by Celestia's choice to conceal the existence of the larger world and the vast amount of suffering it contains. From a pony who used to be Hell's regent on her planet—

(No, shouts Valiant Victory's voice unbidden in her mind, everypony everywhere should want Hell overthrown, and unlike you, Abrogail doesn't have the option of turning her back and pretending it doesn't exist—)

"The power that sent you to me" (who does, now that she thinks about it, remind her rather a lot of Valiant Victory) "would be impressed by that declaration, I think, but she did not, actually, tell me what to do if you made it. I'll have to—"

"No," says Abrogail. "Iomedae can't know about any of this."

"Why not? I really think, if you want to overthrow Asmodeus, Her help would be—helpful."

"I—"

—of course she can't say 'I can't tell you'; the better part of any secret is the meta-secret that the secret exists, as the Infernal proverb goes.

"I may no longer be an Asmodean, but I'm still Evil, and I still have my pride," she says. Okay, good, the mind control isn't making her put that much effort into making her lies believable. "You can—"

She can't invite Celestia to read her mind either; presumably Mephistopheles has sealed some significant fraction of her thoughts, and letting anyone notice this is forbidden.

"—do whatever you need to satisfy yourself of my sincerity."

The geas cannot cause Abrogail to devote more cunning to keeping the secret than she actually has, and Celestia is quite a bit smarter than that. It's obvious to her that Abrogail is under some unusual constraints, constraints she doesn't necessarily want to force her to violate.

"May I read your mind to determine whether you're deceiving me about wanting to overthrow Asmodeus if I commit not to use any other information I find there?"

Can she say yes? "Yes." Okay, good.

Rather a lot of her thoughts are unreadable in a way they shouldn't be for a being at Celestia's power level, but she does appear to be sincere about wanting Asmodeus overthrown.

Abrogail didn't do that to herself. There are relatively few powers who could have, and it's an obvious guess that Abrogail has somehow (clearly Equestria has a security problem, but she had already begun to realize that) compacted with one of them to replace Asmodeus. Given the emphasis on secrecy, there's a further obvious guess as to whom.

That's—

—it's not that that outcome, if as advertised, wouldn't improve the world by her values. It's just that a compact with Mephistopheles, well, isn't going to be as advertised.

It's ambiguous whether this constitutes "information she found in Abrogail's mind" but she's not, for now, going to act on it anyway, including by revealing that she's guessed. Mephistopheles must have known that she would, and she's not going to predictably discourage him from attempting this by—etc. etc. it's obvious if you understand decision theory.

"Very well," she says. "You seem to be telling the truth; I will help you as I can. Where would you like me to send you?"