Stone and Secrets

"So she did that because-"

"Because it is like his grave to her, Twilight Sparkle. Discord took her best friend and her only love so completely that it was all she had left. The final monument, and the only thing that still bespoke his existence."

It all makes sense now.

Twilight's mind was a jumble of thoughts and emotions. Luna had said quite a bit, and the sudden revelations were all proving to be a bit too much.

In truth, Twilight was still unclear on some things, but she could not take any more of this conversation at the moment.

"Perhaps now thou dost see why we prefer not to speak of this history. Indeed, it was the most troubled time in our sister's life. In truth, we do not believe she has ever fully recovered."

Twilight made a shift to leave before she fell into even more of a daze. "I see. Thank you for telling me... all of this, Princess Luna. I think I should get back; Spike will be waiting for me."

Luna smiled  at her. "Perhaps you should."

A still mentally-jumbled Twilight finally got back to her quarters, and found Spike there waiting for her.

Paying him little regard in that moment, she quietly shut the door and slumped against it in defeat.

"Twilight, you look awful! What happened?"

"Luna told me about everything ... but I'm more confused than anything. She said about this pony who Celestia fell in love with, and Chaos Magic, and Discord and... all sorts of things. It almost seemed like... like she was trying to be confusing."

Noticing that Twilight had stopped speaking for the moment, Spike took the opportunity to proudly display a book he had found. Its cover was dark with many years of dust, and it was singed in several places. Twilight's trained eye also noticed signs of water damage.

"I think this book might be helpful. And it wasn't very easy to find, either."

"But... I searched for days... where did you find it? In fact, what is that book even about?"

Spike donned his proudest expression of joyous accomplishment.

"Well, I realized that after five days you probably found most of the stuff about it that would be in the Archives, so I didn't bother looking there. But I did find out that there was an old weird section with old weird books in a hard to reach part of the library. Some of them were even about Chaos Magic, but I found this one tucked away behind some others, and it looked even better."

The book was very faded, but still held a deep green colour. Opening it revealed a title, inscribed in elegant font, that read The Diary of Princess Celestia. Upon opening it, Twilight found many of the pages toward the back cover to be missing.

What in Equestria...

"Spike, did you read any of it yet?"

"No, I was waiting for you before I did that."

Twilight wasn't sure what else to do, so she did what she always did with new books that demanded proper reading. "Well, I guess we should get started at the beginning."

It was impossible to tell how many pages were ruined from the water and fire damage, but after those there was a good amount of untouched text. Twilight started on the first legible page, after casting a spell she had invented to make archaic texts temporarily appear in a way that would be clear to modern readers.

...Shining Smiles, after Luna introduced me to him at the Gala. I can't shake this strange pony from my thoughts. He has given my life a bit of a shaking in the past few weeks, though, so that's no surprise...