Groaning, Seabreeze stumbled along the corridor. Although his legs were now free of the bindweed, they still felt sticky whenever each stride rubbed slightly against his torso.
Two blurs flanked him, waving in a way that suggested a military march. Up ahead, the abdomen of the leader – Dragon Lily? – remained rigid, and only her six legs moved. In fact, she seemed to be forcing herself not to move more than was necessary.
Slowly, the real Seabreeze oozed back into his mind. The Breezie village, covered in Flutter Ponies… Zephyrine and the others trembling under a hundred shadows… a huddle of Breezies wondering whether to throw someone in a room for their own good.
Under his tiny hooves, the wax on the floor tinted the tiles a dirty yellow. He wrinkled his nose at the squelch of each step.
When he passed one of the antechambers, he noticed spits of fire lighting up the corridor, and looked inside. The Flutter Ponies juggled flames or held them cupped in their front claws for examination. One tried to eat a spark, and screeched and spat it onto the floor. It did not entirely surprise him; Flutter Ponies had a well-known interest in fire and were one of the few fey species that would willingly approach it, and even play with it.
When he looked closely, he could see the sparkle in the flames. Piles of soil also sparkled among the chamber like a treasure hoard.
In the middle, an open pit spat up a geyser of the sparkly soil, which smothered those nearby with brown clumps that stuck like mud. None of the flames that were smothered under its wave went out, but simply poked through.
“You should not raid those vaults,” he said. “Terrible things will happen.”
“Spare me your empty threats. The world will not end just because you’re not in charge anymore,” said Dragon Lily without turning around. “You’ll have your World Harvest. We’re not fools.”
A monstrous howl echoed through the hole. Seabreeze felt the rumble through his legs. All three of his guard – Dragon Lily and the two flanking him – stopped and turned.
The fleshy worms of the nose shot up first, and then the Star-nosed Mole Cricket clambered out, knocking piles of dirt and unlucky Flutter Ponies across the chamber. It was squealing, its abdomen swiping at anything in the room like a baguette swatting at bees. The quicker Flutter Ponies swarmed over its back. Buzzing mixed with the squeals and the thuds and the occasional cry and thump of a body.
“Your pet looks a little spooked,” said Seabreeze.
“My fellows will handle it.” Dragon Lily was already moving away. The rest of the party forced themselves to ignore the cacophony, and strode on.
Finally, the grand entrance swelled and towered over them. Brass knockers clanked on the other side. Seabreeze watched the gigantic doors sweep back. He was still struggling to think.
The slit of emerald became a grand room, shaped like the inside of an ancient warrior’s helmet. Painted Breezies lined the walls; Seabreeze remembered wandering in here with friends, floating up to admire the swirly patterns on the many wings. Now the curved inner slopes were smeared with yellowy oil and honey. Someone had cut away the windowpane to create an arched hole.
Seabreeze lowered his gaze to the figure in the centre, and gasped. Tailblade was tied up from neck to stinger, exactly as the Breezies had left her.
“Why are you surprised?” said Dragon Lily calmly. She stepped forwards and turned to smile at him.
Both doors slammed shut. Twitching his ear, he heard both flanking guards shuffle into place on each side. Dragon Lily strode over to the flattened pebble and seated herself opposite him. He glanced sideways at the wide eyes of Tailblade, and realized she’d been gagged with bindweed.
Dragon Lily has her own plans? One of her legs gestured, and he nodded and ambled over to join her.
There was a card on the table, and immediately he noticed the grid pattern. All the sunflower seeds had been set up. Somehow, he wasn’t surprised to find he was using the dark pieces.
“I found this in your home,” she said matter-of-factly. A spasm of rage ran through his face. “Fascinating. I used to think only Flutter Ponies played this game.”
“You do not really think we spend all our time looking frail and helpless, do you?” I might as well play along. Perhaps, if the Flutter Ponies are in a good mood, I can be nice without making them angry. Or a better idea will come to me. But why does she suddenly want me around?
Beside him, Vox Tailblade grunted under the gag. It had been thorough: even the tusks had been tied together so she couldn’t open them, though the result also looked like she was sticking out a gigantic green tongue.
Dragon Lily reached across and placed a clawed tip delicately on one of her pieces. It scraped across the card.
“Flutter Ponies play this game as a way to improve their thinking,” she said to the board. “A simple game is like a simple story. It’s nothing like reality, and yet the lessons you learn are clear and distilled. Sometimes, it’s better than real life.”
Seabreeze shrugged and knocked a piece one square forward. “We just think it is a fun game.”
Do not show any feelings on your face, he thought; though his gaze was on the board, he could tell she had glanced up at him. If she cannot tell if you are lying or not, then maybe you can stay safe.
“Why did you want me here?” he said as calmly as he could. “I tried to escape.”
“It was a test to find out what kind of creature you really were.” Another piece moved. Venom crept into her voice. “You Breezies are all the same. You think you’re the bee’s knees. Well, I am here to prove you wrong.”
“Oh. So that is why you took over our home?” Seabreeze knocked another piece next to his first one. The defence was rushed, but he wasn’t thinking hard about the game. It was taking all his effort just to keep his brow from creasing with worry.
He glanced at Tailblade. No longer groaning through the gag, she was glaring at him as though trying to burn his face off with sheer loathing.
“That’s one of the reasons.” Now, Dragon Lily guided her third piece forwards. “By the way, whoever wins this game gets to decide the fate of our Vox. I personally would like to replace her, but I am curious. What would you want with her, if given the chance?”
Muffled cries growled under the gag. Seabreeze noticed, behind the wide eyes, a slight glistening around Tailblade’s temples. He fought harder to keep his face straight.
“What do you want with her? She is like a queen to you. That was what I thought.”
“It makes the game more interesting. I have… my own plans for the future.”
Seabreeze studied the board, trying to spot the hidden moves behind the setup. A three-pronged attack? She had chosen a piece each from left, middle, and right, which always meant…
He grinned and slid his third piece across. A feint: it had to be.
“You want to show what a hopeless loser I am,” he said. “Is this because of the ‘Big Breezie’ talk?”
“We’ve heard a lot of interesting stories about the Last Minuters.” She moved her fourth piece, still building up a defence. “How you were separated by a leaf falling by. How you sheltered with a pegasus named… Fluttershy.”
It was just a coincidence, he thought. Aloud, he said, “She was very kind to us. Too kind, if you ask me. We were treated like babies.”
And more fool us, we acted like them. He gritted his teeth. They had been so stupid. No one ever thought about the long term. They only thought about food and drink and getting pampered.
Tailblade tried to say something sharp, but only the tone got through.
Seabreeze placed a tiny hoof on a piece, and then pulled back, shaking his head. No sleight-of-hoof. He might as well just punch his way through the front. Another piece was forced towards the enemy defences instead.
“We got held at the cottage until the last minute. Then everyone carried on the journey and we got home a few seconds before the portal closed. That was all there was to it.”
Her fourth piece slid forwards, and then one piece on each side went forwards almost simultaneously. Seabreeze frowned as he considered his sixth move.
Odd. She is still playing defensively. In his experience, pieces started leaving the board around this point.
“I thought so,” she said, but her eyes narrowed. “Some of the rumours were too much.”
Oh? Despite himself, Seabreeze made himself shrug. Tell me what they said! Come on!
“Do you know much about the Flutter Pony life cycle, ‘Big Breezie’?” said Dragon Lily. Tailblade waved side to side in an attempt to wriggle free. “I’ve seen your son. It’s strange to think he’ll look like that all his life, instead of developing through discrete stages.”
“I saw your grubs.” Seabreeze’s piece sidled up the edge of the board. Perhaps she was trying to sweep the wall of pieces up in a steamroller tactic. She’d only manage to capture the middle, but that would be all she’d need to launch further attacks, and it could be over quickly if he was careless.
“Larvae,” she said curtly. “Not grubs.”
“They change as they get older, do they?”
“Yes, in life stages. Every stage is important. Flutter Ponies have to learn how to control the wind, instead of being controlled by it. First, they just eat and drink to build up their strength. Then, they learn how to control their legs in a dance. Next, they become armoured to toughen themselves against knocks and blasts. Finally, and only once they’re trained, they grow their wings.”
Her piece snapped across the board. Before he realized what had happened, the black dot skidded off the edge and spun on the spot. The sneaky devil! Why did I not see that coming?
Staring at the hole in the middle of his defences, he swallowed. “What is this? If you want to show I am a fool, then why here? There is no one watching.”
His next move cut across to fill the gap, but as soon as he lifted his hoof, he saw the mistake. The white piece almost snapped on top. Another one lost. She’d punctured his side.
“The ‘Big Breezie’ is watching,” she said, folding her first two legs. “When no one would dare to do it, he left the cottage and fought a hive of angry bees all on his own.”
“What?” He glanced up, but her face was much better at being stoic than his. “No, I did not!”
“He inspired the other Breezies to go out and finish their quest. He persuaded the ponies…” Here, a faint smirk twitched over her face. “To turn into Breezies themselves and join him. He helped his fellows to become tough as beetles until they were safely home. He gave a magical flower to the ponies as a good luck charm.”
Seabreeze gaped at her.
“Or” – here, the faint smirk stayed – “was that just another story?”
He turned his face back to the game, remembering too late to keep the surge of confusion down and out of sight. The gap in the middle stared back at him. It wasn’t impossible to come back from a move like that, but he’d lose a lot of pieces first.
“That ‘test’ was to draw me out?” he said, frowning. One hoof tapped a piece, still unsure.
Pieces rattled. Tailblade drew back to ram the pebble again, and Dragon Lily, without looking up, reached across and pushed. Gravity blinked for a moment. The Vox gave a muffled cry. Then, she fell backwards with a thump.
“You’ll have to excuse Tailblade.” Dragon Lily unfolded her legs and almost prodded the board with her tusks. “She thinks that, if a Breezie can do it, so can a Vox. In some ways, she’s just a grub.”
Seabreeze spotted it. The gap almost invaded his eyes. Zephyrine had tried something like this once, but the trick was to find the needle before it jabbed the puncture. A piece shot across, he ignored the blur of white as his opponent retaliated, and then his hoof jumped to another black seed and rammed it home.
Her first white casualty flipped off the board and tapped across the pebble to a halt. It was like cutting her stinger off.
“You would not hurt a grub,” he said. “Would you?”
Unfortunately, she wasn’t moved at all. Her next piece cut across, hemming in his pioneer and trapping it among three enemies.
“You think we’re the enemy,” she said. “But what have you done for this world lately?”
“You have to leave now,” he said.
“Why? So everything can stay exactly the same? We’ve heard about how much Equestria has changed. Strange cities and new machines and better medicines and stronger magics. Yet we never change. You never let us change. We’re still stuck in a fairy tale world because you Breezies float in a never-ending daydream.”
Fairy tale… Seabreeze tapped a piece and glanced up at the resin-like veneer of the walls. There weren’t just Breezies up there. Higher up, the Breezie paintings gave way to Breezie-sized faces.
The black attacker knocked another piece away, and he reached down and flicked it off the board. “You do not know what you are doing! Even your Mole Cricket knows better than you!”
A thrust of her leg took out a defender. “It’s just magic brought in from Equestria. We know about magic.”
“Do you? Do you really?” Wham! Another white piece shot off the pebble and clattered over the tiles. “Then do you know what the old name for the Ring Portal is? Do you know why it is here and not in your Honey Swamp?”
Dragon Lily reached for her next piece. A flicker of doubt creased her eyes. She scanned his glare for so much as a twitch.
“This is the Fairy Ring,” he said.
Behind him, the two guards began clicking their tusks. No language barrier could stop those words from cutting straight into the depths. Their minds sparked into life. He could almost hear them thinking.
“Vox Tailblade is moving on to the next stage of the life cycle.” With a scrape, Dragon Lily blocked his piece from coming up the side. Her folded wings twitched. She wasn’t looking at him.
“Everyone knows there were Fey Ponies in the olden days.” Casually, he flicked his piece into hers, sending it skittering over the tiles. “They danced the circle into life. Did you see the way the toadstool homes curved around the hill? They made the soil rich. They built the hill as a fort. They lived under the ground in the catacombs. They put their stamp on this place over and over and over.”
“The old Vox has been Vox for too long.” Three legs skimmed the tops of the seeds. Eyes darted from one piece to the next. “Tailblade needs to step down.”
“Have you had any Flutter Ponies with strange pains?” he continued. That was how the other Breezies started, he thought guiltily. I kept telling them it was just a back pain or a stomach ache, but they kept saying it was the Fey Ponies cursing them. I cannot believe I am now trying to get someone to believe it!
“What kind of Vox leaves her hive to go gad about another world?”
He lost a piece, but another one jumped in to avenge its fallen comrade. Both of them could see the puncture on her side, and unlike him, she had too many pieces at the other end of the board.
“It is Feyshot,” he lied. “The Fey Ponies are angry and firing cursed arrows in secret to torment your fellows.”
“Powerful allies? Then why,” she said, “didn’t you Breezies win when we ambushed you?”
“They are no one’s allies! We do not control them! We just keep them happy. Fey Ponies do what they like. You must have found the thunderstones we kept in the old catacombs too. Those are proof of their power.”
Seabreeze allowed himself a knowing smile. Everyone knew about the thunderstones. They were the remains of ancient Feyshot arrows that had created the first lightning strikes. That was what the legend said, anyway.
Her eye twitched. So she had heard of them.
It didn’t matter that they were just pieces of flint from the Big World. He certainly wasn’t telling her the Breezies had collected them over the years. Even if she could dismiss the legends as nonsense, she’d have to deal with a lot of Flutter Ponies who couldn’t; the two guards behind him would be watching the game and waiting to talk about it to their buddies. And then there were the other fey species…
More white pieces went flying. By now, they were simply going through the motions. Both of them could see the ending coming, and never mind that he lost a couple to a pincer move. Even Tailblade had hauled herself up to watch the board quietly.
“So,” he said, and something of Zephyrine’s smug smile crept out of his face and rode on his words, “what kind of Vox does leave her hive to go gad about another world?”
Hisses and spits were all he got. Behind him, the guards hissed and spat back. Now, if guards are just as gossipy as Breezies are, then every Flutter Pony will know what happens next.
In any case, everyone must have known the stories. Whenever someone had a strange pain or a sudden hunger, it was Feyshot. Apparently, Fey Ponies snuck around and shot invisible magic arrows for fun. And they could prove it: see all these strange arrowheads lying around? That’s what you get when Fey Ponies create lightning with their special thunderstone arrowheads. See? Thunderstones! Feyshot! There must be a connection.
At least, that was how everyone else saw it. By Dragon Lily’s twitchy eye, he could see the stories banding together against her own brain. She only had two pieces left to play.
“There’s still the ritual,” she said, shuffling one piece forwards.
“The Fey Ponies will be angry with you,” he said. “I have seen what you are doing to their home. They like the World Harvest to be exact, and they are used to us Breezies doing it. They do not like sudden change. Even if you get it right the first time, do you think they will care?”
The white piece tumbled and fell off the pebble. She didn’t even bother to move the last one.
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re bluffing. The Fey Ponies are long gone.”
“There is a reason the pieces are black and white.” Seabreeze placed his hoof on the seed. The Vox’s eyes widened. He could hear the two guards each take a step forwards. No finishing move in Hive Versus Hive had ever been the focus of so much burning attention.
“It represents good and evil,” said Dragon Lily, but her voice had sunk into the sullen depths. She was trying, and failing, to lose interest.
“The elder Breezies taught us about the two types of Fey Pony,” he said as though talking to a child. “The Light Fey and the Dark Fey, sky and earth, high and low, order and chaos… well, it meant lots of things. The Fey Ponies invented the game as a way to stop fighting each other.”
Hungrily, he tilted the piece.
Then he blinked, and woke up.
His hoof rose off the sunflower seed, which rocked slightly on the grid. Coldly, he folded his forelimbs.
“I forfeit,” he said.
Dragon Lily frowned at him. “What? Why?”
Because I am not supposed to be winning or losing. This is not a game. My partner and my son are stuck in the cold, dark night with a lot of scared Breezies who do not know where I am and what you are doing to me. You are not telling me anything, and this is never going to make any of you talk.
Because I am scared of what will happen if I win.
“Because… sixteen moves back, I made a piece jump over yours but it went a square too far,” he lied. “I cannot win fairly now. It is your game. I cheated.”
Both his antennae drooped while the guards behind him spat and hissed in excitement, and he lowered his gaze to his hooves. A muffled gasp met his right ear. When he glanced up, he saw Tailblade’s eyes shining.
Dragon Lily, however, summoned a thin smile and was once again her stiff, disciplined self. “I thought so. At the finish, your Breezie nature reasserts itself.”
There was a cold silence. He could see the daggers in her eyes.
“Yes. I am sorry to disappoint you,” he said.
“Oh well.” Dragon Lily shrugged, and the daggers vanished. “It was an interesting game while it lasted. For your commendable performance, you may go free. Perhaps we can play again later. Once I find another, more interesting stake.”
As he went out, he twitched his antennae and smelled the stench of joy from the direction of the Vox. He didn’t dare look around until the double doors slammed behind him.