//------------------------------// // Chapter 1 // Story: Soldiers Die // by Gimtek //------------------------------// Soldiers Die Chapter one The day had been enjoyable. The princess of the sun laid on a blanket on the floor of her study, content and happy spending time with her most faithful student. A young unicorn filly and her patchwork doll, Smartypants, are both reading from an advanced applied magics book normally reserved for unicorns in universities. Turning the page with a glow from her horn, the young lavender unicorn turns to her doll, pretending to listen to it before turning the page back slowly. "Okay hurry up and read that part again Smartypants, I want to move on to the part where they explain how to focus magic onto a point to amplify it's effect!" The young Twilight exclaims, nodding at the doll before turning the page once again. "This is so exciting I have to try it out!" Her horn begins to glow purple before a larger golden aura surrounds it, stopping the filly's spell before it forms. Her face grimaces as she looks up at her teacher, who merely smiles serenely before speaking. "Now Twilight, we are merely learning the theory tonight. There won't be any practice until you've memorized the steps and know them by heart." Celestia says gently as their horns stop glowing simultaneously. "But I can handle this!" The unicorn leaps to her feet, accidentally knocking her study partner down which stares up with button eyes vacantly. "It won't be like last time when I made the door grow hair! I've learned much more focus since then!" A light chuckle escaped the princess's mouth. Indeed it was interesting when Twilight cast a spell mid study that was intended to make the door change color, and even more so when Celestia had to ask her guards call in a barber to shave the door in order to restore it to it's former wooden self. A single spell component was woven incorrectly and caused a very radical change in effect. She admires her young enthusiastic student's desire to experiment and push herself to new levels, but on more than one occasion has been forced to step in to ensure the safety of Twilight and her study from harm of misfired spells. "Very well then," she surrenders to the pout on her pupil's face "lets see if you can focus your magic on that piece of paper and amplify a simple telekinesis spell to put it back together." With a yellow glow, Celestia lifts the blank page and tears it in half. The filly's jaw drops. "Telekinesis is a basic spell that deals with manipulating objects, every unicorn can do that." She gulps and looks down at the two pieces of paper in front of her. "Can it really do that as well?" "Young student, you will merely be manipulating the two halves back together." She stands behind Twilight and lowers her head and speaks softly over her student's shoulder, guiding her step by step. "Pick up the pages.... Good... Now concentrate on the torn edges. Feel the fibers of the paper and move them gently." With a determined grunt, the young unicorn squints at the hovering pages, her horn's aura flaring bright purple as she concentrates her magic into her task. "Good, now find the fibers on each sheet and bring them together one by one. Fuse them back together at a molecular level with your spell." A soothing voice whispers in her ear. "And then what transpired next, sister?" Princess Luna asked impatiently, the two royal sisters sitting on large pillows on the floor of the very same study, relaxing with some drinks. "Well, if you must know, the entire room and both ponies inside were wallpapered with confetti." Princess Celestia laughed before sipping some tea. "I had underestimated her uncanny knack for getting unexpected results from experiments. We had to continue in the courtyard for the evening while the poor maids had to clean the mess." Her blue younger sibling began to laugh as well, doubled over in tears. Another voice piped up, causing the younger princess to settle down some. "Oh please Princess! That is so embarrassing!" Twilight Sparkle comes back to the middle of the room, laying a book and a fresh mug of coffee in front of herself before laying on her pillow to rejoin her royal friends. "I was so young then and it was barely a year after I started learning under you." Her head drifts over to Luna, who has managed to sit upright again, still giggling somewhat. "I had to wash Smartypants twice to get all the paper dust out of her!" She turns back to her mentor. "Thanks again Princess Celestia, for inviting me up here to hang out with Luna and yourself. I've had a lot of fun this weekend!" "Oh please Twilight, you know you can call me Celestia." She replies lovingly with a gentle smile, knowing full well that Twilight will still ignore the request and insist on following protocols. In a way she envied the relationship Luna and Twilight have. Although a princess herself, Luna and Twilight have a more informal relationship as friends, not as royalty and subject, or teacher and pupil, but as friend and friend. Not to say that herself and Twilight aren't friends, but years of ruling over Equestria and being her faithful student's personal teacher have put an invisible boundary in their friendship. Twilight views her as an authority figure and a friend, and while always devoting it all to their friendship, she always puts on a show of respect that one gives peers as well. "I know, Princess." Was Twilight's usual response to the request whenever it came up. She knew she couldn't possibly call her anything other than Princess Celestia. After all of those years looking up to her as a ruler, goddess, teacher, and friend she cannot bear to not give the one pony in the whole world she admires the most any less than the full respect she deserves, and it was always met with a warm smile from the princess. Luna looks down at the book, if you could call it a book, it was more a tome, thick binding, the pages yellowed and worn around the edges almost as large as the pony that brought it over to the floor. The title was faded and unreadable due to the thick dust covering most of it. "Speaking of maids, it appears they have missed a rather large spot." She winces as Twilight blows the dust off the cover gently. "I found it while making coffee, I noticed a painting crooked on the wall, when I tried to straighten it I noticed it was covering a small shelf that contained this book. Do you know what it is, Princess Celestia?" The Lavender pony tries to read the now mostly dust free cover, but the lettering is still too faded from age to read. Celestia's eyes widen, in a swift motion she pulls the tome away from Twilight just before she turns open the cover. Unnoticed by the sun princess, a folded up letter slips out from between the pages as she stands up to return the book to its place. "I'm sorry, Twilight, this book is off limits for everypony." She says firmly but politely as she puts it back behind the painting where it had rested for a long time before. Twilight and Luna meet each other's gaze with a bit of confusion at Celestia's action. Luna levitates the paper from the book and looks at it quizzically before her eyes widen as well. "What is it Luna?" Twilight asks quietly while Celestia is still away stashing the tome in it's hiding spot. "I knew these ponies..." Her voice trailed off as she continued to read the letter. "Oh my..." She looks up at her sister with grief, who is standing over her, awash with sadness in her face. Slowly she lets her elder sister have the letter, who turns slowly to place the letter back in the hiding place with the tome. "Tia, I'm sorry." Tia. Luna's pet name she used for her sister, only when it was the two of them, never in front of others, not even Twilight before, who reacted to that name with even more confusion on her face. "It's alright, Lulu, it's just..." Her sentence is cut short by a sob. Tia, and now Lulu. Twilight's gaze shifts back and forth between the princesses, her expression pleading for answers. Everypony had suddenly got all sad and serious and she was left in the dark. To top things off, Princess Celestia was crying. Twilight was stunned, she had never seen the princess cry, she wasn't even sure that the goddess could cry until today. The thought of the princess being vulnerable in such a way shocked her very core. She wasn't sure how to proceed, she needed more information. "Luna, what was in that letter?" Luna said nothing, her gaze locked onto her sister, a grimace on her face. Celestia raised her head to look back at her younger sister. Slowly nodding to give Luna permission. "It's okay, Lulu. It wouldn't be right to keep this from my best friend now that her curiosity is peaked." She turns and goes to the balcony, spreading her wings. "I'm going to get some air, I will return after I clear my mind." With a quick leap and flap of her wings, Celestia disappears into the night sky. Luna clenches her eyes shut for a moment, wiping away a tear for her sister. "Twilight Sparkle, this information does not leave the three of us. My sister has always considered you highly, and to be considered her 'best friend' is probably the closest anypony save myself and one other that anypony will ever get to her." Best friend. Another word she had never heard the princess use, technically two words, but Twilight pushes the semantics out of her head for the moment. She always had assumed that the princess had many other friends in Canterlot, any of which were more important than herself and could be considered better than herself. Also, this other pony that Luna spoke of, who was it? Her mind raced a mile a minute before she opened her mouth to ask the first question. "One other?" She finally says. "A soldier in the Equestrian army." Came Luna's response, plainly. "Soldier? Equestrian army?" Twilight asks both questions rapidly. "Is that like the royal guards? I've never heard of those before." Luna sighs, "You live in a lucky time, Twilight Sparkle, Celestia informed me that diplomacy has kept Equestria in peace for centuries now. The Equestrian army was dismantled and the Royal Guard replaced it generations ago. The guard is merely trained to repel threats to the kingdom. Soldiers are trained to be threats to other kingdoms, usually at great cost." She had heard about large scale conflicts in history books, but most of the details were muddled by the passage of time and poor record keeping on the darker parts of Equestrian history. Ponies invading other nations seems so abhorring to her that she wretched at the idea that words could fail between nations. "So what do soldiers do exactly, and who was this pony that was closer to the Princess than I'll ever be?" A hint of jealousy washed over the last part of that question. "Twilight Sparkle, soldiers are ordered to do things that put themselves at great risk. Simply put, soldiers die." Luna shifted slightly as she watched her unicorn friend's unpleasant mournful reaction to that last line. "The pony I speak of is Xiphos. He was a soldier that I knew before my fall and subsequent banishment to the moon." "I don't understand," Twilight leans closer, disgusted and enthralled by the discussion at the same time. "What was his connection to the princess? Why would the princess be friends with such a brute that probably murdered others in battle?" Luna stands up, looking down at Twilight sternly. "I'll forgive that remark for now Twilight, for what you hear my story you will see Xiphos in a much different light. He was a good friend of mine, as well as even your hero Star Swirl the Bearded, but he was much more to my sister. That earth pony was her bodyguard while we warred with the dragon clans. And saved many lives in villages bordering the gryphon lands with his heroism. He was there alongside my sister, trying to save me as she used the elements of harmony on Nightmare Moon." Her tone calmed as she sat back down. "I'm.. I'm sorry, I judged him before I got any details about him..." Twilight felt bad for her snap judgement. "But that letter, what was it?" "Ill get to it soon enough, Twilight Sparkle. The letter was written while I was in banishment, but I can begin the tale to give you understanding. My sister should be back by then to finish, assuming she feels up to it."