"There." Chrysalis stood, watching Starlight. "Now what?"
Starlight hesitated. She had been so focused on fighting with the other filly that she wasn't actually sure what to do now that she had won. "So... what do you know about this place?"
"We aren't in the physical world," Chrysalis replied. "We're in a place Chauncey called the emotional plane, but it wasn't researched enough to have a real name. You can think of it as a parallel to the real world, only the laws of space don't apply. We don't have bodies here, which is why anyone without a magical means of tethering their memories to their soul doesn't have any. It's also why you look like a sarosian. If you wander long enough, you'll see other sarosians who were different creatures in life as well."
Starlight blinked. "How do you know all that?"
Chrysalis scowled. "You pick up a lot, being worked on by Chauncey. And you left me ample time here to experiment for myself."
"Sorry." Starlight folded her ears. "I wanted to send everyone back to their original bodies, not lock them up in here. But I don't have the power to do that."
Chrysalis eyed her, then sighed. "And then there's this."
She whipped around, her aura reforming, drawing her sickly-green spear out of thin air, before hurling it through a window, earning a strangled, snarling cry. When she drew it back, Prince Gazelle was caught on the end like a skewered fish, and she slammed him into the ground, smoothly decapitating him and reducing his phantom to ash.
Starlight stared at the spear with wide eyes. "Are they attacking you?"
"I'm attacking him," Chrysalis grunted, tossing aside the spear. "That was the day he laughed at me and my foal. Just because we have our conscious memories here doesn't mean we don't have the kind of deeper memories the world relives for everyone else. If you're going to follow me, you had better get used to my stepfather appearing in a drunken rage, or Gazelle climbing in through windows. There have been a few fireballs from the rocket strike, as well."
Starlight stared at the window Gazelle had been hiding around, climbing up herself and looking out to see a flat field covered in nondescript ash. "We have to relive memories too? I don't think I've seen any of mine."
"If you've been here longer than a few minutes, you would have. And it would follow you everywhere you go." Chrysalis already looked resentful, as if she expected to be proven wrong and be told her situation was just that much worse than Starlight's.
"Umm..." Starlight bit her lip. "They're not dangerous?"
Chrysalis snorted. "Merely annoying. Though you should hope yours isn't a good one. You might want to stay here reliving it forever..."
"Well, thanks for wanting to help me." Starlight looked down, then back up. "So you have more than one."
"Yes." Chrysalis didn't care to elaborate.
Starlight worked her jaw, but couldn't think what else to ask. "So... I'm looking for a way out of here, but also for Valey. Do you know where she is?"
"No." Chrysalis sighed. "And I've spent the past month searching."
"You have?" Starlight blinked, stepping closer. "For her?"
"Not just for her." Chrysalis winced, a word suddenly stuck on her tongue. "...For my foal."
Starlight caught her breath, slowly remembering that all this had happened because Chrysalis's foal was born a sarosian. "They would be here too?"
"I can't see why not," Chrysalis dryly growled. "Unless they took her outside the reach of the dusk statues. They already took her from me in Izvaldi. Told me I wasn't fit to be a parent. But I have no intention of giving up. Even if my child cannot age beyond infancy in this place, she is still mine."
"And no Valey either." Starlight folded her ears. "But you were looking for her as well?"
Chrysalis sighed. "You're asking so many questions..."
"I need to know!" Starlight squeaked. "I have to understand this place as well as possible to find her!"
"I told you what you needed to know." Chrysalis turned her back on her. "There is no concept of space in this world. Everything you see here is projected or created from our emotions and souls." She pointed again to her ethereal black cutie marks. "That's why I look the way I do."
Starlight frowned at her own flanks. "Are you saying these are special? I thought I just looked this way because I don't have my cutie mark yet."
"That's a sickening name." Chrysalis rolled her eyes. "And you're different because you're an abomination just like me. Real ponies can't have our abilities unless they've been twisted or modified beyond sanity."
"Modified?" Starlight's heart retreated into her chest. "You're just saying that. You don't really know what I am, right?"
"I know what I felt when I touched you with Stanza's laser," Chrysalis droned. "When you took an attack for your friend. There's nothing natural about you. It was like stepping on ice, expecting solid footing and breaking through into a ravine. And then you used enough negative emotional energy to beat my containment at its own game, and trap me along with it. I don't need to know the specifics on how you work to tell that you're just as twisted as I am."
"Oh." Starlight looked away, but the pressure lightened somewhat. "What did Chauncey do to you? To make you... not a normal pony?"
Chrysalis sighed. "Nothing a kid like you has any business knowing. And it would take a long time to explain."
"It has to do with that crown, doesn't it," Starlight pressed. "The one you put on, that was part of Stanza."
"That crown was originally mine." Chrysalis shook her head. "The metal it was forged from is made by using Mistvale arts in a certain way on windigo hearts. It's part of my soul, and what keeps me tethered to my memories and body." She pointed to the smoky, fading trail coming from her flanks. "Chauncey had me craft it, and then used it as Stanza's core. Everything he did to it reflected to a lesser extent on me."
"And it went all the way when you put the crown on," Starlight finished.
"You're very astute," Chrysalis groaned. "You saw Stanza. You know the experiments it was used for."
Starlight folded her ears. "In Gyre? Where it was tied to those statues with the organ pipes, and the instructions for the prisoners to say what they hated or were afraid of and that Stanza was listening?"
"And involving dusk statues." Chrysalis sat back against a wall and stretched her wings. "And the result is pretty, aren't I? One weaponized sack of rejection and torment, most of which isn't even mine. Be serious. Can you blame me for wanting just a little something to balance that out?"
"Not at all." Starlight met her eyes. "I blame you for what you did, not for why you did it. I wish you had gotten your love, just more nicely."
"Hah." Chrysalis laughed dryly. "Enough about me. I think I've earned the right to some probing, personal questions of my own."
Starlight sat down as well. "Alright. Ask away."
Chrysalis opened with a strange look. "Why can you use the same emotional magic I can without being a bitter wreck? You don't even look like you're struggling with it, but you're a bigger yawning chasm inside than I am."
"No I'm not." Starlight folded her ears. "I can't use the Nightmare Modules whenever. Only when I get something to power them, like moon glass or your laser."
Chrysalis snorted. "Yes, you used the tiny scratch I inflicted on you to overpower me in return."
"I have no idea how the Nightmare Modules work or what powers them or why I can use them!" Starlight protested. "I know where I got them, but that doesn't help a lot."
"Oh?" Chrysalis raised an eyebrow.
Starlight sighed. "I got my first one from Puddles. She ate it or something and had been hiding it from Chauncey in her stomach. I think. I don't know how that works. And then I got the rest in a weird cave in Mistvale that I think was all a dream, and had this shrine where I got separated from my friends, and a weird altar and a lot of traps and this strange machine that might have been from Indus..." She glanced back at Chrysalis. "Do you know anything about Indus? The first pony I saw said this was it."
Chrysalis scoffed. "Indus is a myth."
Starlight chewed her lip. "But he said this was it, and he was really happy about finding it. Unless his memory was of finding it... but I thought Indus was only explored thousands of years ago."
"So maybe it was a thousand-year memory." Chrysalis shrugged. "Who knows how long Garsheeva keeps souls inside of her."
Starlight stared blankly, unsure how to process the fact that she could be speaking to ponies from thousands of years ago. "So he was... the original explorer who...?"
"Indus is a myth," Chrysalis repeated, growling. "He was probably just delusional."
"Oh." Starlight wasn't convinced, but she let it drop. "Well, that's all I know."
Chrysalis sighed. "I suppose my curiosity will have to go unsated."
"Sorry." Starlight looked away. "Anything else?"
Chrysalis hesitated. "...You keep insisting on being sickeningly nice to me. But suppose I play along and return the favor. What will you do if you find a way out of here? Take me with you, and I doubt my body will ever remember the time spent here. I might even be stronger for it, with my brand returned. But leaving me behind would be nothing but a cruel reversal."
"I don't know," Starlight realized. "I really didn't think that far ahead..."