Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum

by DarkZonker

Journal

Luna put the journal down. She looked at how much she had already read and it was barely a few pages out of at least two hundred. Her eyes felt dry, she guessed that she hadn’t been blinking as often as she should have.

A ray of morning light cut through Luna’s artificial ones. Celestia must have lowered her moon then raised the sun. Normally, that would send Luna over the edge, the moon was her responsibility, but there was something more important to take care of. She got up from her pillow and and magically tethered the journal to her flank like a saddlebag.

Luna did not close the door to the vault, she knew she would be back soon. On the way out of the library, she noticed that there were more guards keeping an eye on the Starswirl wing. They eyed her curiously, as if they weren’t told that she was there. Probably Celestia’s doing.

The castle itself was much busier in the day than at night. Servants rushed from room to room and dusted everything they could see. Butlers carrying platters perched on their backs walked quickly, but carefully, to the dining room. Nobles walked in packs, gossiping like the vermin they were. As Luna walked past, they all raised their chins and harumphed, avoiding her like the plague. Luna clenched her jaw and rustled her wings angrily. Now she remembered why she didn’t like to walk around in the day.

Ever since her return the nobility has been nothing but hostile. Usually ponies were just afraid whenever they were in her presence, like the servants, every time Luna walked by one they would freeze up in absolute fear. Now, they were mostly indifferent, even a few of her personal servants were warming up to her and all of her night guard adored her. Strangely though, the nobles never feared her, or at least not publicly. Their rumors always made their way to her through her favorite servant, Tranquility. The rumors hurt, worse than any physical fight. Wounds could hurt but they would always heal. The lies that got spread did more than that, they undermined her confidence, punched holes through her self-esteem, and damaged any chance for re-assimilation into society. Thankfully, Tranquility was always there for Luna to talk to.

Luna walked quickly to Celestia’s quarters, eager to be out of the bustling hallways. Celestia would have been done eating long before everyone else. Luna knew that her sister always ate before raising the sun, it gave her the extra energy to give it that beautiful sunrise she always wanted. Celestia’s room could have easily been mistaken for any other if there wasn’t a head sized emblem of her cutie mark above it. She always was the humble one. A curt knock on her door was answered by a muffled, “Come in.”

Luna pushed the door in and closed it behind her quickly. Celestia’s room was fairly large, but really only enough to accommodate for her size and all of the desks and papers that cluttered it. Her bed was on a raised platform and writing desks lined the edges of her walls. In the corner, Luna saw the form of brilliant white fur and three toned, spring colored hair. Celestia was wearing her half-moon reading glasses and hunched over a mountain of documents piled on the desk. She was sitting on a blocky cushion big enough to fit her larger alicorn size and was finishing up stamping her royal seal on a manilla document. Her head cocked back to see who came in. Upon seeing Luna, Celestia’s face spread in a smile and swiveled around on the cushion to face her.

“Luna! What are you doing here? Is it about the moon? If it is, I’m sorry but you weren’t lowering it on time and we have to keep a schedule,” She rattled off, almost as if she had been practicing it for the last couple minutes.

Luna dismissed it with a wave of her hoof. “No, no. It isn’t about that. I don’t really mind that you had to do it,” she could practically see Celestia straighten with relief, like a weight had been lifted off her withers. “No, it’s about-”

“Is the nobility giving you trouble again?” Celestia said, the interruption tweaking Luna’s patience.

“No. Well yes, but that’s not what I wanted to talk-”

“Do I need to call congress and speak to them again on how to treat a princess?”

“Well, I’m not sure how much good it will do but we need to-”

“Because I can. It would be no troub-” Celestia said, getting up from her sitting position.

“Celly! Please stop interrupting me,” Luna said forcefully, making Celestia’s jaw click shut and sit back down.

“Sorry,” Celestia said sheepishly, blushing a little. Her horn lit up in a golden aura, which proceeded to engulf her reading glasses. She magically lifted and folded the glasses, then placed them on the papers in front of her. “Now, what did you want to talk about?”

“Well, it’s about the recent events that Tranquility has been telling me about,” Luna said, walking over to Celestia while pulling a chair over with her magic to sit on.

“And what is that?” She asked sweetly.

Luna thought about trying to sugarcoat what she was going to say next.

“I’ve heard that there might be another conflict brewing that could embroil the planet in war,” Celestia’s eyes went wide in shock.

“What!” She sputtered. “Where would Tranquility have heard a thing like that?” Celestia’s voice got a little higher pitched and she put on a broad smile. Luna could tell it was fake.

“Please, Celly, I would prefer to know information without having to learn it through the castle grapevine. I am not a child that you must protect all the time,” Luna said, shattering Celestia’s visage. Her smile melted into a small frown.

“I know. It’s just… You’re my little sister, and even though you’ve been back for a couple years now, I still want to protect you. I know it’s still been tough, with the nobles and ponies being afraid, I only wanted to shield you from more strife,” the frown shifted to a sad smile, Celestia’s eyebrows heavy with a little bit of guilt.

“It’s alright, dear sister,” Luna said pulling Celestia into a hug, grinning when she felt her sister’s hooves rub her back in little circles. Luna pulled back from the hug, though her forelegs were still hooked together with Celestia’s. “Now will you tell me what’s going on? This is a diarchy after all,” Luna giggled.

Celestia laughed in response. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

She turned back to the desk and started leafing through manilla folders in her outgoing box. She stopped on an especially thick one right in the middle of the tall stack. Using her magic, she lifted off all of the folders and pulled out the one she wanted with her mouth, then let the let stack float gently back into it’s place.

Luna grabbed the folder with her magic and pulled it out of Celestia’s mouth. She opened it up and started leafing through the papers. The bolded headline at the top of the first page stood out to her.

“Rising Tensions?” Luna’s voice filled with confusion.

“Yes. All around the world, every country has been gearing up for war,” Celestia explained.

“That’s what I heard from Tranquility but I didn’t realize it was this bad,” Luna said as she flipped through more documents.

“For the past month I have been trying to defuse the situations that have been emerging but I’m afraid the outcome of total war might be inevitable.”

“As you probably know, I went to the vault in the Starswirl wing last night-”

“Yes, I sent some extra guards to stop anyone from bothering you.”

“And I found this journal that has what I believe are the beginnings of the War,” Luna craned her neck and pulled the journal off her flank. When she saw it covered in Celestia’s aura, she let go and inspected her sister’s face. Celestia’s features went through a couple different phases. First confusion, then surprise as she briefly flipped through the book, and finally resignation.

Celestia sighed. “Where did you find this, Luna?”

“It was in a small little safe behind the human shelf. Why does it matter where I found it, what matters is that maybe this can help us now.”

“Luna this was hidden for a reason. This journal contains very dangerous information, I’d like for you to put it back where you found it,” Celestia’s face fell into a mask. It was even better than the faces she put on at poker night, It was more like the face she used to shut down indignant ponies when they wouldn’t accept her judgement. It was all focused eyes, pinched eyebrows, and a tight jaw with thin lips. Luna felt her heart flutter a lttle in fear.

Luna narrowed her eyes. “No,” she stated, careful to keep her wavering voice solid.

Celestia’s mask cracked, flinching a little. “Wh-what?”

A spike of adrenaline shot through Luna’s system, electrifying every thought. “No, I won’t, Celestia,” this time Celestia actually flinched as if she had been slapped. This was the first time in a long time that Luna went against her sister’s wishes, and it was exhilarating. As much as she liked the feeling, Luna pushed it down. She knew where that path led, and it wasn’t pretty. She gingerly took hold of the journal with her own magic and placed it back on her flank.

Luna leaned in closer, peering into Celestia’s shocked eyes. “I’m on to something here, Celly, I can feel it. This journal holds the answers to peace for the world. I’m going to find out why it happened before. If I can do that, then I can figure out why it is happening now.”

Celestia broke out of her stupor with a shake of her head, her face twisting in confusion. “Do you even hear what you’re saying? That book is dangerous and you want to keep digging into it? This is an entirely different problem than from what happened in the past.”

Luna spread her forelegs wide. “History repeats itself all the time, Celly,” she raised her hooves to the sky and laughed in exasperation. “My prophecy, Discord’s breaking out, Sombra’s return, Tirek’s escape,” she counted out on her hoof, tapping it with each point. “History is always repeating itself. It just seems like it hasn’t been because the world has been in stagnation for so long. I didn’t experience time on the moon like normal. After the Elements cleansed me, it felt like a second had passed since I let the darkness take me the thousand years ago. All of the strife that happened then was fresh and new, and let me tell you, it’s all the same things that are happening now.”

“History repeats itself, Sister,” Luna let her forelegs fall to her sides. “ And no matter how long you wait, it always does.”

Luna hopped down from the cushion and walked out of the room. The hallways were decidedly empty, it was that time in between breakfast and lunch where no pony had much to do. Servants and butlers were busy preparing for lunch and nobles were off schmoozing their way into greater riches and corruption. It made Luna sick thinking about how bad the political situation had gotten since she came back.

She decided to not return to the vault immediately, and instead headed to her own bedroom. It was on the opposite side of the castle. The general decor of the other side being more night related. Paintings like Starry Night, by Van Trough, adorned the walls and the wallpaper was a dark blue speckled with white spots. She found her room at the end of the hallway, her cutie mark of a waning crescent hung above her door.

Her room was an almost an exact carbon copy of her sister’s, but with a slight change in color. She made her way to the raised bed and plopped herself down on it. The plush mattress and comforter made for a great place to sit and read whenever she found time. She pulled the journal in front of her and flipped it open to where she last left off.

---

Celestia watched as Luna left her chambers, her jaw opening and closing like a fish out of water. She hadn’t been talked to like that in centuries. She almost couldn’t think straight, just replaying the confrontation over and over again in her mind. Maybe Luna was right about the journal. Celestia had first read it when the castle historians came into possession of it, and immediately after finishing it, she locked it away. She never thought she would see it again because of the hidden safe, coupled with the fact that nopony entered the vault almost guaranteed that it would never see the light of her day again.

It was possible that some kind of answers were hidden in the journal. Celestia hadn’t been looking for them when she read it and Luna was always much better at studying. An idea popped into her head and it felt like a lightbulb just turned on. Her horn lit up in a golden aura and she levitated over a piece of parchment and a quill. She dipped the quill in ink and started scratching words into the parchment. Her note came together and with a contented smile she rolled it up, sealed it with a ribbon, and set fire to the bottom. Flames quickly swallowed the scroll and with a pop, disappeared. With that done, Celestia went back to the important folders waiting on her desk.

---

Spike was, in fact, a sleepy dragon. It wasn’t enough that his home had been destroyed, now he had to sleep on a old, holey pillow on the crystal floor that was Twilight’s new room. What made things worse was being awoken by gurgling in his belly signaling what he knew was a letter coming though. He rolled over onto his back and heard the tearing of fabric. He didn’t really mind that his back spines tore through the pillow, it sucked anyways, and maybe this way Twilight would get him his old basket back. His stomach erupted into a gout of green fire that coalesced into a scroll that fell back onto his chest. With a groan, Spike got up from the pillow and jogged down the crystal hallways. He turned into the library room and saw the sparsely populated bookshelves and Twilight’s form hunched over her study desk, a stack of books from the princesses old castle next to her.

“Hey, Twilight!” She turned around to face Spike. There were deep bags under her eyes and her mane was a rats nest. She gave a tired smile and beckoned him over with a little nod. She yawned, her mouth stretching as wide as it could.

“Pull another all nighter?” Spike smirked. Twilight responded with a tired nod, when she blinked her eyes, they stayed closed and it took an effort of sheer will to open them again.

“Well, Princess Celestia sent a letter for you,” he put the scroll down next to her.

“Thanks, Spike,” she croaked. Her wings felt uncomfortable and she ruffled them, just trying to move the muscles. Twilight lit up her horn and tried to grab the scroll. Her aura covered about half of it before stopping. She sighed, too tired to be angry. Maybe I’ll read it after a quick nap, Twilight thought.

She blinked, but this time her eyelids couldn’t open up again. Distantly, she heard a thud, then she felt a headache, then she stopped caring.

Author's Note:

Just a brief interlude. We'll get back to Marcus next time ooooooooonnnnn Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum!!!!!

Comments

[Slayer 10321]

Sooo...update soon? This story is too awesome to not update!!! Also love the Atlantis, Latin/Roman, and alchemy/transmutation references!!!

[DarkZonker]

5389949 Yeah, soon I think. I've had a chapter half finished for... four months now? University has been pretty rough lately, but it's my winter break now so I'm hoping I can get some content out

[Slayer 10321]

5390374 Same here. I can't wait to see where this story goes!