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// Die by the... Wow. Correct, but grim. 
// Story: Live by the sword 
// by bonamb 
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Luna sat alone on a throne surrounded by nobility.  

This, was boring.  

The stallion in front of her was trying to convince her of the benefits of privatizing the railroads, as he and his compatriots had done from various angles, for almost a month now.  

Luna had denied his first proposal. And the second, fifth, and sixteenth. The others had been presented by such weak willed nobleponies that they had wilted under her glare. Oh, she knew that they were attempting a monopoly on the market, thus filling their own pockets. That she most certainly understood. What frustrated her, however, was how much she could do about it, as each proposal, as long as it had, ah, 'significant' differences from the last, was allowed to be presented before her in court for potential approval. 

She would not be the one to crumble in this pathetic war of attrition, although it was truly amazing how many different ways they had of generating money at the expense of other ponies.  

She cast a rememory spell, disguising the flare of her horn behind floating the lengthy document he had been holding over to her, ignoring his startled gasp, and let some of her attention slip away from the present.  

 She didn’t understand how Celestia had done this alone, every day, for almost a thousand years.  
 



 
Luna pushed the empty coffee mug aside, cursing as it left a ringed stain on the document beneath. It had been but a month since her return from the moon, and she was still familiarising herself with the intricacies of Celestia's government. Her power had not yet returned and as of that moment her hair was a light blue mop, brush discarded in an effort to study.  

Despite the benefits of an alicorn's memory, understanding this obscenely complex, layered structure was akin to straightening a string that had been twisted through four dimensions with ones hooves. It may have been straightforward at its genesis, when Celestia and Luna, upon finding themselves with a crown thrust at them, had spent almost a decade researching the most successful societies of both the past and then present. From their combined efforts, they had created a potentially stable structure to last the centuries with the two, eternal alicorn heads of state to guide them, both mares becoming greater in time and accumulating respective centuries of experience - providing a mutual counterbalance.   

Of course, then that had happened.  

With Celestia having to shoulder the burden alone, and along with many, many unaccounted for factors, concessions had been made, and amendments added. Innovations in technology had led to new departments, and a monarchy instead of a diarchy had led to Celestia putting more power into the ponies' hooves than they had intended. This wasn’t bad in itself, but it had led to the creation of the nobility and the now entitled upper class as they appeared to have become in these more 'civilised' days.  

Luna missed the days before the crown. Before royalty and nobility and rule. When they were free to be whoever they wanted to be, without responsibilities and repercussions.

Therefore she was. She refused to be constrained outright by rules and regulations. She was Luna, warden of the moon, former bearer of honesty, laughter and loyalty, and she would dammned before she became disloyal to herself. She would play pranks, laugh loudly, speak however and whenever she wished and never, ever, repeat the mistakes of the past. 

She was currently protected somewhat from the repercussions of those mistakes by Celestia's shadow. And a very large shadow it was.  

Sometimes, she thought she wished she was a little more like Celestia. Luna may have been herself fully, happy in her body, but she believed her own virtues the stricter to keep to. You didn’t have to be good to be kind, you didn’t have to be well meaning to be generous, and you certainly didn’t have to have another ponies best interests at heart to make friends, though most times her sister embodied the lighter side of all those elements seemingly perfectly.  

Put simply, Luna's required an open, vulnerable heart, and Celestia's did not.  

Celestia was the chessmistress. She may lose the battle, but never the war, always willing to make sacrifices and concessions for the bigger picture, while Luna settled for nothing less than absolute victory in all aspects of her life. 
But for now, she had a government to unravel, and a millenium of political history to sift through to understand the plays, tactical losses and eventual successes her sister had made that had resulted in the bare simplicity of their former diarchy becoming... this. 
 



 
Luna's mind returned to the present, spell ended and eyes flickering as she quickly skimmed the document.  

She believed that the true measure of a pony's nature came when under stress, and what better way to provoke a stress induced, instant reaction than with violence? 

That was where their differences became apparent.  

Despite Celestia lack of practice and relative unfitness, the two were still matched in skill. Celestia had Aurora, her rapier, and she wielded it as she did words. Precisely aimed, each strike carefully measured. But she had disconnected almost entirely from her natural - equine - core, not responding by instinct, but by calculation. It was only in the latter stages of the bout, when her exhaustion had drawn her down, the chains holding back her passion had relaxed, if only slightly. She had very nearly become alive.  

That was where Luna wanted her to go. She wanted to draw out the old Celestia, to tear down the walls and formality that she had hidden herself behind, even from her sister. Her needling had worked, poking fun at her sister's pride by attacking her fitness, and how her once spry self had vanished behind a mare sitting on the throne. Her rather one sided 'conversations' with Sabre had also born bounteous fruit. Her sister most certainly had noticed and understood what she was doing, but, Luna hoped, recognized that she was doing it for her benefit, not for any other reason. 

Although, the pranks were fun. 

Speaking of. Returning her attention to the still blathering stallion in front of her, she grinned. Perhaps with a few too many teeth she realized, as he took a sudden step back before catching himself. 

Clearing her throat, she began. "Thine proposal has... some merit, Lord Collar." 

He blinked, before smiling and opening his mouth to reply. 

"However, I find myself unable to pass a ruling on this exact issue, due to not having all the details at hoof." 
He frowned, and began to point at the document she held, before blanching as it burst into flames in her telekinetic grip. Looking from the ashes floating down to the floor and back to Luna's face, he trembled. 

"I could, if thou wished, pass a snap judgement on it?" She retrieved Noctem from her room and let it materialize in her magical grip next to the throne, slowly twirling it. She glanced to the hammer then back at him, letting her grin grow a little wider. "We even have our... gavel at hoof." 

He made a pathetic squeaking noise, and backed away before bumping into the pensioner behind him, then turning and running for the exit.  

Hah. Let Celestia deal with that one. Him and his ilk are obsessively persistent. Though, perhaps she enjoys letting me frighten then. 

She wouldn’t have hurt him. Probably. Though, it did help to remind them every now and again who was the immortal who very nearly bought their entire civilisation crashing to the ground a few times, despite having been one of its founders.
 
Some of those times weren't even her fault. 
She reduced her expression to the patented 'Celestia smile', spinning Noctem out of existence and beckoning to the next petitioner to the throne. Perhaps this one wouldn't require intimidating. 

This night, fortunately, would soon be over.