Starlight ran. Izvaldi changed around her, but remained Izvaldi, shifting through dozens of time periods as different souls controlled the memories she lived. Throughout it all, ash fell, a constant reminder that this world was shadowed and cursed, frozen in time as an endless purgatory. The knowledge that all these souls would have been somewhere far worse sustained her, but her strength still wavered as her mind pounded with the reality of her alternative.
No one could grow. No one could change. No one could live or move on or learn, their personality and their mind locked into a snapshot of memory. The ones who had bad memories would suffer through them forever, and no one could comprehend time enough to appreciate it when their memories were good. What was the point of being alive in this place, if these souls could be called alive at all?
She skidded to a halt against the corner of a building, leaning and panting as soulless memories walked by. Her legs forced her to, but the moment she stopped, the visage of Felicity's mother's last moments caught up to her like an avalanche. It pulsed against her eyelids even as she squeezed them shut, until the memory hurt so much she physically cried out in pain and frustration. Why wasn't there anything she could do!? She saved the souls from Chrysalis... by doing what, confining them in another prison she had no control over? One fate was bad, but what if Nightmare Moon's magic was no better?
She was interrupted by a scream.
Starlight darted upwards, spreading her wings and getting off the ground. When she reached the roof, she realized it was a place she had been in person: the slanted side of the lord's mansion, countless months ago when she was sneaking with Jamjars. The scream had come from a window, and it was open.
"What do you mean, mother!?" an enraged male voice snarled from inside.
Smash!
Another scream sounded, along with stomping and several desperate cries before Starlight was able to get a good look. A sarosian stallion in fancy clothes was preparing to hurl a wine bottle, a mare in the corner cowering and bloodied and trying to cover a filly. The mare's side was sliced and bloody, and the stallion's cravat was wet and dribbled, his mane looking like he paid someone to take care of it and then contributed no effort himself. He flung the bottle, and it shattered upon impact.
"You dare h-have children w-with... others?" One of his eyes twitched. "Disloyal...!"
Starlight wasn't having this. She couldn't identify anyone in the room with a cutie mark, but it was hard to see the filly properly. But if there was any way she could interact with these ponies, she wasn't about to watch someone lose a parent again. She snarled, stepping forward, preparing to put all of her combat training to use...
With a noise that rang her ears to the core, a spear of eldritch green appeared from a pool in the floor, striking the stallion's underside and running him straight through.
"Aah!" Starlight gasped, stumbling backwards in surprise.
Slowly, the spear detached from the floor, made of a color she never wanted to see again in her life. It twisted in midair, the stallion's growls of rage turning to agonized cries as he was tortured by gravity, spun along the crackling weapon like a skewer. But that was all background noise to Starlight. Cutie marks were colorful, here, but this wasn't a cutie mark. It was a rare color that had pierced her Nightmare Module color-blindness before...
The lance finally shimmered, and its victim burst like a balloon, scattering into a cloud of ash that seemed less real than the flakes outside, like it was a phantom itself. Starlight stared as the wounded mare seemed to pause, like a suspended animation, and slowly slide aside. Despite the age difference, even without the shimmering green outline where a horn should have been, it wasn't possible for her to mistake the filly in front of her.
"You'd think after weeks and weeks of replaying the same memory again and again, interfering would get boring," filly Chrysalis drawled, her eyes piercing Starlight's. "But I could relive this for the rest of eternity, thanks to you."
Starlight's heart stopped. "Y-You..."
"Me." Chrysalis was a sarosian again, just like her, with even odds of being younger or older. "I wondered when I'd see you show up."
"What are...?" Starlight swallowed, realizing she wasn't immediately about to attack.
"Good question." Chrysalis barred the room's only door with her spear. "I've asked myself what I'm doing here hundreds of times, and the only real answer is that I picked a fight with someone just as abominable as I am, and you got the upper hoof. So now we get to exist in your private mindscape instead of mine."
She rolled her shoulders, sitting down. "So? You win. Do as you please."
"...What?" Starlight blinked. "Is it really you, and aren't you going to fight me?"
Chrysalis pouted, refusing to meet her eyes.
Starlight tilted her head, eyeing Chrysalis like a primed explosive. "You can remember things. You aren't frozen in time."
"Why do you care?"
Starlight opened her mouth and trailed off. "What's going on?"
"I told you," Chrysalis grunted. "You won. Now what are you waiting for?"
"To do what?" Starlight pressed. "Are you real, what are you doing and why are you here?"
"I'm here because obsidian extracts sarosian cutie marks, and whatever remains of my soul is tied to that." Chrysalis rolled her eyes, barely letting Starlight see.
Starlight blinked. "Does that mean your body...?"
Chrysalis groaned. "Just get on with yourself, already! Why did I have to be undone by a kid who asks so many questions...?"
"Get on with what!?" Starlight stomped, her frustration beginning to mount. "I'm not here to torture you or gloat or whatever! I'm stuck here, and you're the first pony I've seen who remembers anything except one point in time!"
Chrysalis froze, slowly turning to her with a round-eyed expression... and then tipped over, howling with cruel laughter. "You caught yourself?"
Starlight felt her cheeks heat up. "Shut up! It was an accident!"
Chrysalis cackled and punched the ground, crying tears of irony.
"Stop it!" Starlight squeaked, her voice cracking. "I have had a terrible time in here and am only here in the first place because my friends were in danger, and we're only in the situation we're in thanks to you in the first place! Now tell me everything you know about what's going on!"
Chrysalis snorted and lifted her head from the floor. "You're serious, aren't you."
Starlight bit her lip and nodded.
Chrysalis narrowed her eyes. "You're actually stuck here. You don't have control of the power you used to beat me."
Starlight folded her ears, considering making a run for the window.
"Then enjoy your new life." Chrysalis swept a hoof. "The memories are malleable if you think hard enough about them. Go find someone suitable to take it out on, or use yours if it's unhappy enough. Enjoy your five-star vacation tour..."
"Wait a minute!" Starlight stood back up. "You mean there's really no way out?"
Chrysalis rolled her eyes. "Did you intend for there to be when you made it?"
Starlight winced again.
"Then you should hope you're as incompetent as you look," Chrysalis snorted.
Starlight growled. "Why are you being so mean to me? I thought you were upset in the first place because nobody cared about you! Isn't that why you were going on about stealing Valey in the first place? Because you wanted to force everyone to love you? This is a terrible way of doing it."
"That's all pointless now," Chrysalis complained. "On account of everyone having no memories and being great for nothing but a cheap fix. Other than you. And you're the one who locked me here in the first place."
"There are better ways, you know." Starlight frowned. "Like actually being nice to your friends, and trying to protect them. With how powerful you are, you could have kept a lot of ponies safe, too."
"Says you, who did exactly what I tried to," Chrysalis griped.
Starlight took a step back. "No I didn't! I was stopping you from taking my friends away! You were going to steal Valey and kill everyone else, and me, too!"
"And what have you done?" Chrysalis raised an annoyed eyebrow. "Stolen all my love and taken it away. And I was merely trying to stop the same."
Starlight hissed. "But it was never yours in the first place!"
Chrysalis yawned. "And their love just belongs to you, instead? Face it. You're greedy. You can't stand the thought of living without them. The only difference between you and me is that I've already lived with it for twenty years, and you're just afraid of what you can imagine."
"No, I'm..." Starlight cringed. "My friends didn't want to be killed or absorbed by you!"
"And how much do you think I wanted to be in here?" Chrysalis shrugged.
"I was stopping you!"
Chrysalis waggled a hoof. "I don't want to hear it. You're a brat. Just like me."
Starlight hesitated, hurting but not defeated. "If I'm so much like you, shouldn't I understand you? Wouldn't you want my company?"
Chrysalis's face scrunched in confusion.
"Because..." Starlight sighed. "I've always wanted someone who could understand. So if you feel differently, then we're definitely not the same. But otherwise... truce?"
She held out a hoof.