Abrogail lifts the still-limp Twilight, who feels ten times heavier than she ought to be, onto her back and follows Pinkie, for lack of any other available action besides 'curl up and wait to be tortured'. It takes a lot of effort not to curl up anyway.

Ahead there's a larger chamber, with a pool of lava in the floor from which the light is coming. Above the lava a naked woman is bound to the wall with spiked chains; in spite of her appearance, it's somehow obvious that Abrogail and her friends are looking upon a god in the seat of Her power.

Her hair is pink.

"Surprise."

Well, she is surprised. This is not a place that should exist in Hell. This is not a person who should exist in Hell, if she's drawing the correct inferences from the pink hair and the catchphrase. She can actually feel the oppressive weight of—how deep are they, exactly? Planar Adaptation works fine in Avernus and Dis—not lessen precisely, but become more endurable. There is a sense, in this goddess's presence, that no pain can really hurt her, that she can suffer but not break, it will cleanse her and then everything will be okay.

That is definitely not the way Hell works. It's the way Cheliax tells some people that Hell works, but Abrogail was never that sort of person, nor that dumb.

"Hi! It's so nice to finally meet you in person but Twilight is having a really bad time, so I'm afraid we have to go! Could you make us an exit please?"

It's not actually Her fault that it's impossible to leave Her realm under normal circumstances. It's just that you'd have to go through Caïna, and the Lord of the Eighth doesn't allow visitors.

"I'm going to get in so much trouble for this but"—Gate.

She gets her ass through the Gate without spending precious seconds on being surprised about anything. The other side is recognizably Dis, although it feels like Dis-with-Planar-Adaptation and she didn't actually cast Planar Adaptation on herself—

"What the actual fuck."

"I was about to ask you the same question."

"Are you—?"

"You? Yes." She's suddenly way more self-conscious of being a tiny cute unicorn than she's been in a long time. "Don't ask, I don't know. Though I suspect Iomedae of being responsible."

(Twilight looks a little bit better; she's aware enough to slide down off Abrogail's back and stand on her own legs, though she still seems withdrawn and isn't speaking.)

Her eyes go unfocused for a second.

"It wasn't the Iomedae I know, though if there's more than one of us there's probably more than one of Her.'

"You can Commune with Iomedae?!" Is this even actually Hell. It continues not to feel like it.

"No, of course not. This is Hell; I am in fact a devil and not a very doompunk* angel. I cannot talk to Iomedae, at least not without a Plane Shift, just to Someone who can...I suppose this must look very strange to you if you're from a normal timeline. Though I must now wonder if there's actually any such thing as a normal timeline." She gestures at her other self's general poniness.

(*) The original Baseline word, now loaned into this Abrogail's dialect of Taldane.

"Lastwall suddenly acquired working guns and at least one secret archmage out of nowhere, conquered Cheliax, and dumped me in a very distant part of Elysium ruled by a unicorn demigoddess where everyone is various kinds of tiny horse. Maybe now that I'm somewhere normal my fucking Alter Self will work"—Alter Self?

Nope!

"You have a curse on you that prevents you from taking any form other than pony. I could probably break it, but I don't think I should."

"Why the abyss not?—not that being a pony is that bad, but—"

"It's obvious if you understand decision theory."

She's been around Aspexia Rugatonn long enough to maybe guess what her alt means by that. "Wait, we're cooperating with Iomedae now? What the Hell happened—and I mean that literally, what happened to Hell?" She only now notices that the cobblestones aren't silently screaming at her.

"About two hundred years ago, a teenage boy from an advanced Lawful Good society outside Creation suddenly appeared near a Chelish Worldwound fort..."

[The rest, as they say, is history.]

"It could very well be that the only difference between our universes is that in mine he ran the other way and ended up at an Iomedaen fort instead. And might also be a girl."

"Nope! Totally wrong! Although in this universe Alexeara Cansellarion was a girl. It didn't help."

(No one else even noticed her come through the Gate.)

"Wait, there's a pony Pilar? How would that even work? Do Elysian ponies even have masochism?—Is the purple one Carissa?"