Year 8 of the 2nd Diarchy, 76th day of the Southward Equinox
Personal Journal, entry 7

I think I’ve slept a total of five hours since the encounter in the gardens two days ago. I’m tired, but there is so much to do. I can work through the exhaustion for a couple more days, I think.

I don’t know what I was thinking. I went to Discord for help to get into the vault. It seemed like a good idea at the time, because he’s the only one, that I know of, that has ever been able to work around the type of barrier protecting it. Now though, I’m not entirely sure. His willingness to help me, even after my attempt to destroy him, makes me very uneasy. He’s hoping that giving me access to the information I desire will cause enough chaos that he will be able to free himself; of that, I’m quite sure. It almost seemed like there was more to it than just that, though. I have to make sure that I am very careful with the way I use the books I’ve acquired, and make sure that no pony can gain access to them.

He claimed to know a lot more about the nature of the Equestrian Diarchy than what he would tell me. I don’t know yet if I really believe what he said about Celestia and Luna forcefully overthrowing the previous regime. I have always been under the assumption that it had been a peaceful transfer of power. Of course, what is taught to the general populace is that the Princesses have always been in power over Equestria. The more I delve into my research on the Princesses, the more discrepancies I discover between ‘common knowledge’ and the way things actually are.

I’m rambling again.

The fact of the matter, is that he helped me, and I was able to retrieve ten books from the vault, unnoticed, as far as I can tell. I nearly had three others, but they were destroyed when Discord closed the barrier. He tried to play it off as though he did it on purpose, but in his current form, I don’t think he had the power to keep it open any longer.

Arcana asked me this morning if I was feeling alright. I told him simply that I hadn’t been sleeping well lately, which isn’t really a lie. I haven’t been neglecting my other duties as a result of my new research, so I don’t think anypony is suspicious of me.

I’ve made time in the past couple days to go through the books that I collected from the vault. Time that I probably should have spent sleeping.

The titles of the ten books are as follows:

- Tactical Offensive Telepathy - This appears to be a guide on the use of telepathy in an invasive manner. The idea of which, I have only seen mentioned once in another text. That book was a guide for advanced magic studies, and the section that made mention of invasive telepathy was a listing of banned ‘dark’ magics.

- Theory and Application of Temporal Manipulation, Volumes 1 & 2 - This one intrigues me. There is much dispute within academia at this time on whether or not chronomancy is even possible. Yet, here is a set of tomes that appear to have not only details of many proven, working spells of that very branch of magic, but also the base-level calculations and theory of how it all works.

- Symbols, Runes, and Sigils - This ‘sigil magic’ is something that I’ve never heard of. Quickly glancing through the pages of this book, it appears to be instructions on the amplification of magic by using runic symbols arranged in very specific patterns.

- Illusion - At first I was confused as to why this title would be in the vault, but as I looked through it, the answer quickly became clear. Most unicorns know some basic illusory spells, such as image projection for entertaining or soft-step spells for quieting one’s hoofsteps. This book, though. This is something else, altogether. Invisibility spells that, with enough power, would have the ability to hide a large city from view and spells to duplicate oneself in order to confuse an enemy. In addition, some of the illusory magic in this book seems to be very closely related to the invasive telepathy, causing ponies to experience uncontrollable anger or paralyzing fear with a rather simple spell. I believe this book holds the key to viewing the texts that I have regarding the Princesses.

- Transmutation of Living Creatures - I didn’t look very closely at this one. Frankly, the ideas it holds are terrifying. The drawings and etchings within are the things of nightmares. Ponies, changed into... I don’t even know what.

- Life and Death: The Art of Necromancy - I’ve read historical accounts of ancient battles where the losing side would, as a desperate last resort, force their battle mages to raise the corpses of dead soldiers in order to continue fighting. I always shrugged it off as gross embellishment of oral histories passed down through generations. This book, however, suggests otherwise.

- Astral Projection: Trapping and Spiritual Possession - It doesn’t even seem that this should be possible, but here it is. I’m assuming that anything the Princesses would view as dangerous enough to warrant placing in the vault, is very likely to be reliable. To separate a spirit from its physical body, seems likely to be more dangerous to the caster than the potential target. So many things could go wrong, for instance, trapping the user’s spirit, instead of the target’s, within another plane of existence.
-Volumes 23 & 98 of Study 612718 - The pages of these are hidden, just like volume 105, but I feel that these are the most important of what I retrieved. But why 23 and 98? I would have expected consecutive volumes; not that I expected any more of these books on the study of the Royal Pony Sisters, at all.

Some of the books seem that they will be incredibly useful, particularly the two volumes on chronomancy and the text on illusory magic. Others appear that there is a good chance that I may never read them, such as the ones detailing transmutation and necromancy.

Fireshade knows everything, short of how I was able to obtain these books. I’m not sure what she would think about my going to Discord. It’s probably better to not tell her at this time.

I want to tell Spike. I really do. It hurts me to keep something this big from him, but he has a terrible tendency of letting things ‘slip’. He has a hard time keeping a secret, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but with what is happening, it would be very detrimental to what I’m attempting to accomplish for him to accidentally tell anypony.

I have now nearly finished the administrative and technical training under Arcana for my new position. Next week I start my military training at the Equestrian Military Academy. I am told that I only need to learn ‘permanent installation defensive tactics’. I don’t think it’s particularly important, since the last time the Grand Magus took control of a military unit was over a thousand years ago. Besides, if I were required to take command of the defense of Canterlot, my first orders would be to put somepony in charge that has better training and experience than me.

The only bad part of the tactical training will be that Fireshade won’t be there. She has her job to do back at Section 5. She’s helped me so much in getting acclimated to working in Section 5 and reacquainting me to life at the castle, and we’ve become very close over the past couple months. I’ll miss her company while I’m at the Academy for the next month or so. At least it’s near enough that I will be able to go home everyday after my classes.

It’s late now, and I’ve already spent the better part of two pages. I’m going to bed.