Starlight stared at the sign and the flagpole, the words Welcome to Indus looking like they had been inscribed with a blade or other apparatus. For a moment, her mind locked, running in circles of whether a mystical, forbidden land was really in her sword or she had somehow gone somewhere else.
"Well, hello there!" a stallion's voice said behind her, causing her to squeak and flare her wings with surprise. The extra shock of having wings to flare made her full-on trip, and she landed on her muzzle, the realization that she would have hit her horn had it still existed filtering into her mind as well.
"Oh! Didn't mean to startle you. Need a hoof, little one?"
Starlight uncomfortably got her hooves beneath her, wishing desperately she wasn't being watched. If something had happened to her body, she wanted to be the first to see... She aggressively blocked him out of her senses, bringing her wings forward with muscles that felt like she had possessed them all her life. They were leathery and webbed.
She rubbed a hoof over her face, feeling for a horn, and found none. She had tufted ears instead. She was... a batpony here?
"Didn't expect to run into anyone out here," the stallion behind her said, standing further back than he had been. "Fear not, though, I won't hurt you. Where did you come from?"
Starlight slowly turned around, ears and tail down, not surprised when she saw another sarosian. "Where did you come from?" she asked in return.
The stallion regarded her curiously, his face sporting a strong jaw that belonged in a magazine. "Why, somewhere else, of course! ...I think." He rubbed his head. "Who cares? The point is, why would I want to be anywhere else?"
Starlight stared around at the silent world, ash falling against a veil of blackness. "What is there here that you want?"
"It's not a matter of what, but where." His voice turned gruff and earnest, and he turned to face the flagpole, putting a strong hoof atop the sign. "This is the land of Indus. For my family, my country and the entire world, I've spent my whole life reaching this place. The benefit to all of civilization outweighed the risks... and risks or no, here I stand."
Starlight tilted her head, his cutie mark standing out as the only thing in the gray landscape that was filled with color. Actually, if she recognized color and was aware that she did, wasn't that a thing she forgot about when using the Nightmare Modules? She tested one more time, and her shadow cloak wasn't there... "How does it benefit them?" she asked, hoping to keep him happy while she thought.
The stallion stroked the sign proudly, making her wonder if he had made it. "All sorts of ways."
"Like?" Starlight tilted her head, deciding to deal with him and figure out what she could about the world before worrying about herself. "Don't you have to get home for it to matter?"
"...Huh." The stallion scratched his head. "I suppose I didn't think about that! I have no idea. It makes sense, now that you mention it..."
Starlight frowned. "Do you even know how to get back, or where you're going, or how you got here?"
The stallion sat down in confusion. "Well, now you've got me worried, little missus. Does it really matter? The point is, we're on the soil of Indus! So what if it's a little strange? If no one's been here before, there's no proof it isn't strange for everyone!"
Starlight stood and looked away. He was right that it was strange for everyone, though probably not in the way he intended. Was he missing memories? From everything she had seen with Valey, Navarre and Nyala, memories seemed to be unique to body-soul combinations. However that worked, it might follow that since her sword was filled with disembodied cutie marks, the pony she was speaking to could be one of those, and could be missing his memories due to not really having a body...
But then why did they appear to have bodies, what had happened to her own body, and how did he know about Indus?
The stallion didn't pressure her for her silence. He was busy staring admiringly at the flagpole.
"You put this flag here," Starlight said.
"My crowning achievement."
She bit her lip. "...What's your name?"
His eyes crossed. "...It's somehow slipped my mind. Silly me, right? You'd think a famed scientist like me could remember a little thing like that. But who cares!? Have you even seen where we are?"
"You're a scientist?" Starlight pressed, not sure why she cared herself but curious for any details she could get in this unnatural place.
The stallion rubbed his chin. "Am I? Huh. Must have slipped my mind too. Though now that you mention it, it does ring a bell somewhere..."
Starlight felt a shiver go down her spine. "So... what else is here? In Indus? I don't want to stay here, so is there a direction I should go, or...?"
"I haven't tried any!" The stallion confidently grinned. "If you go exploring, come back and tell me what you find! I can't wait to see the look on my wife's face when I get home and tell her all about this. Assuming it's not kept confidential, of course..."
Starlight left, knowing that if she asked about his wife, she'd likely feel bad if he didn't remember her too. The ground was flat, and soon she was completely surrounded by ash.
A flurry drifted around her, no wind to propel it. It felt like the world itself was moving as she stood in place, and she couldn't tell if the black void around her was filled with everything or nothingness. But at least it was private here. She found herself wishing for a lake so that she could see her reflection...
The world complied. Out of the darkness, the ground fell away, revealing a pool just narrow enough that she could see the far side through the ashfall. The stone beneath her hooves was separated by a blanket of ash that crumped slightly with each step, but the flakes that hit the pool just disappeared, melting without ripples and keeping it open to the sky. What did that mean? If these flakes appeared from batponies who were killed by the black sword, and they perpetually rained from Indus's sky, and the pool was those flakes as a liquid... It felt like there was a connection waiting to be made, but she couldn't see it.
What she could see was her reflection, her features shifted to be slightly draconic. She spread her wings, investigating and admiring them, and leaned closer to see her slitted eyes and tufted ears. She had fangs, too. Little ones, fit for a filly.
A faint instinct told her the pool was good to drink, and she almost pushed it back, but then thought on it. The pool was either made from or full of flakes, the flakes were batponies, she was a batpony... but didn't ponies eat plants and other living things normally as food? Maybe it was true that she was what she ate.
She leaned down, tapping it with her tongue, noticing her tongue was slightly longer than she was used to. Probably another batpony thing. The pool was sweet against her tongue, tasteless yet strong and almost familiar. She closed her eyes to take a deeper drink...
"Out of the way! Hahaha!"
Something bumped into her, and she fell on her rump to see a pair of foals dashing away, clad in ghostly outlines of a suit and a dress. She rubbed her head, blinking... and looked back at the pond, realizing it was actually a fountain. The terrain was less even than she remembered, with a couple of buildings in a style that reminded her of her climb through the Mistvale grand temple. In fact, they even had the crystal lines, glowing with hazy blue energy.
All around her were shadowed outlines of ponies, no cutie marks on their flanks or detail to their faces, and when she tapped one with a hoof, it passed right through. The two ponies left that were real, she saw, were a mare and a stallion, each clad in phantom clothes as a more distinct shadow recited words that sounded like wind.
The pair of souls embraced, then kissed. As they locked hooves and wings, a tapered end to a blue crystal line grew beneath them an inch longer.
Starlight blinked, making out frills and fancifulness in their half-existent clothing. "What are you doing?"
"Having the best day of our lives," the mare murmured, not looking away from the stallion's eyes.
"Getting married," the stallion breathed back.
Neither of them looked interested in talking. "Who are you?" Starlight pressed, just in case.
"My lover's spouse," they replied as one.
Starlight swallowed, a flake of ash landing in her eye and melting away with barely any sensation. "Have fun..." She turned her back on the wedding, heading for the entrance to a building and hoping it would be more productive than staying outside.
The building was bigger on the inside. With a carved, double-barrel ceiling interspersed with pillars and arches, a long corridor stretched out before her, the entire left wall an open balcony with ash falling past, the ground too far down to see. All the doors to her right were evenly spaced and fancifully ornamented, and also closed tightly. It reminded her slightly of the villas in Skyfreeze.
Starlight glanced back and forth, a few more ghostly ponies that had neither form nor cutie mark walking in both directions. They neither reacted nor interacted when she spoke, and she couldn't fathom what they could be. With nothing better to do, she tried a door and found it locked.
It quickly reacted, though, swinging inward. A long-maned sarosian stallion blinked down at her. "Who are you supposed to be?"
Starlight blinked back. It was Navarre.