//------------------------------//
// Ponyville Reprise, part 2 
// Story: The Adventuring Type 
// by Cold in Gardez 
//------------------------------//

The Friendship Castle was mostly empty when they returned after lunch. Starlight Glimmer’s windows were open, with the curtains billowing out in the wind, so presumably Ponyville’s resident sorceress was somewhere around. Dash pushed open the doors with her shoulder and led the way in.

Twilight was in the library, nestled into a cushion near the check-out counter. A pool of sunlight surrounded her, which momentarily threw Dash’s finely honed sense of orientation for a loop – at that time of day, at that latitude, in a room with those windows, the sunlight should’ve been shining on the walls, not the floor. It was like waking up and finding the clouds upside-down.

The princess looked up and smiled as they approached. Her face was still drawn, and her eyes were red as if she’d been crying recently. But the smile was genuine, if small. Spike sat by her side, apparently trapped there by her wing. “Hello Dash, Mister Nutmeg. Heading back already?”

“Not yet.” Dash stared at each of the windows in turn, trying to find the one that was wrong. “How are you doing that?”

Twilight tilted her head. “Doing what?”

“The sunlight,” Nutmeg said. “It’s… as a pegasus, it’s odd to see.”

“Oh.” Twilight closed her eyes for a moment, and the pool of sunlight fled across the floor and up the wall like a swift, bright centipede. “Localized refraction spell. I like reading in the sunlight, but the sun is always moving. So I made a spell that continuously bends the light coming in through the windows so it shines on my reading spot. That way I never have to move.”

Unicorns. They were all a little crazy. Rainbow stared at the sunlight on the walls as if it was about to pounce on her. “Cool. Hey, uh, so… how are you? I mean, how are you doing?”

Twilight smiled again. “I’m doing better. Everypony’s been so kind and understanding. Shining and I… we talked for awhile last night, about why our parents never told me about my… heritage. I’m probably still in shock a little bit, but I’m definitely better. Spike’s helping me a lot.” She squeezed Spike closer to her side with her wing and nuzzled the top of his head.

“I can’t move,” Spike said.

“Hush.” She licked his spines, like mothers did to straighten their foals’ manes. “You’re comfortable to snuggle.”

“We’re not bothering you, are we?” Nutmeg asked.

“No. I imagine I’ll be out of sorts for a few days. It’s good to have friends around.”

“Cool,” Dash said. “Hey, you mind if we look at some of your books?”

“It’s a library, Rainbow. You can look all you like.” So saying, Twilight stretched and stood up. Spike took the opportunity to make a break for it, scampering across the crystal floors for the exit.

“Thanks.” Dash wandered toward the stacks, then realized that she had no idea what books were where. Unlike the bookstores she’d been to, the library had some sort of academic cataloguing system with letters and numbers and decimal points. She furrowed her brow, then turned back. “Uh, little help?”

Twilight walked up beside her. For the first time, Dash noticed just how tall the princess had gotten – it used to be they could look each other straight in the eyes, but now Dash had to tilt her head back ever-so-slightly. “What are you looking for?”

“Anything on chess.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I need to study so I can beat Nutmeg.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow, then glanced back at the stallion. He was perusing some other shelf filled with large, hard-bound books.

“He plays chess? You play chess?”

“Yeah, but he’s, like, super good. I need all the help I can get to beat him.”

“Hm.” Twilight’s ears flicked. “If he’s a ranked player, you’ll need to learn openings and gambits. There’s hundreds of them, but just learning a few dozen will help hone your skill and give you the edge over most beginners.”

“That sounds like studying.”

Now Twilight’s smile was real. “It is.”

Horseapples. She’d studied before, though, for weather and flight tests. She could study for chess too. Dash took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and nodded. “Let’s do it.”

Twilight led them down the files. Her wings reached out, seemingly of their own accord, to brush the tips of her pinions lightly against the ordered rows of spines like lovers as they passed. She walked without pause, without referencing the obtuse signs on the shelves or bothering to read the titles. She led them down the obscure rows unerringly until they reached a spot near the library’s south wall, where an open window let in the scent of pollen and birdsong. Twilight paused, her horn glowed, and a slender tome floated out of the shelves to hover before Dash.

“This is one I used as a filly,” Twilight said. “It contains 47 openings and gambits, each—”

“What’s a gambit?”

“It’s a…” Twilight paused and tilted her head. Clearly the question had thrown her, as if somepony had asked Rainbow Dash to define the air or wind. “It’s an offer, of sorts. A type of move where one player offers a piece to the other, sacrificing that piece for a better position on the board. Do you understand how positions work?”

“Eh, a bit.”

Twilight smiled. “Well, gambits might be a bit advanced at this point. Just worry about the openings for now.”

That sounded patronizing. Familiar, comfortable patronization. Something ponies loved to do to her. She frowned. “I know how to play.”

“I didn’t say you didn’t. But we all have to start from a base of no knowledge and work our way up. It took years before I felt comfortable playing the old stallions in the park in Canterlot.”

Huh. There were old stallions who played in parks in Canterlot? Dash filed that away for later. “I’ll play you. I’ll play you right now!”

So it was that they found their way back to the center of the library, settling down in Twilight’s weird sunlight pool atop the starburst mosaic pattern in the crystal floor. Twilight dug out a chess set from somewhere in the foals’ gameroom corner of the library. The pieces were plastic and the board a flimsy cardboard thing that folded in half for easy storage. Twilight mumbled something about having a nicer set upstairs, almost as if she were ashamed of making her guest use such a rude set, but Dash had none of it. Swiftly she set out the pieces, taking black for herself in a fit of undeserved confidence, and spinning the board toward Twilight.

“Your move,” she said.

“Nutmeg taught you to play?” Twilight asked. She carefully lifted her king’s pawn with her hoof and set it forward to squares.

“Yeah. He’s pretty good.” Dash matched Twilight’s opening with her king’s pawn, putting it head-to-head with Twilights. The two little plastic earth ponies stared each other down.

“Mhm.” Twilight reached out with her hoof and pushed her queen’s pawn two squares forward, forming a rank with her king’s pawn.

Dash matched the move again. The board was still in symmetry. In one sense the game had not even begun yet, all the pieces perfectly in balance. She could see the board from that perspective easily now. But from another perspective, one she was dimly aware of, the match had already settled down a certain path. Those four pawns, those four weak, insignificant pieces, had already shaped the game to come. She could sense this, like shapes in fog, or clouds at night. She knew it was there but she lacked the vision to understand it yet. This knowledge enticed her and frustrated her.

Twilight must’ve noticed something odd. She stared at Dash in silence, then carefully lifted her king’s knight up, moving it in position to attack.

“You keep using your hoof to move pieces,” Dash said. She mirrored Twilight’s move with her own king’s knight. The board’s symmetry shifted from vertical to radial.

“It’s considered respectful of your opponent,” Twilight said. She slid her king’s bishop out across the board, the first piece to cross into enemy territory. “And also consistent with the rules. Once you touch a piece you’re supposed to move that piece.”

“Nutmeg said that rule’s just for tournaments.”

Twilight smiled. “You’d be surprised how seriously some ponies take chess.”

The game played out quickly after that. Dash attempted to set up a few forks and pins, but Twilight seemed preternaturally aware of every piece on the board and their freedoms. The positions Dash sacrificed trying to set up clever moves slowly caught up with her, and Twilight picked her ranks apart, stealing pawn after pawn without reprisal. And soon enough Dash was caught in a trap of her own making, leaving a rook open to capture when she focused too much on maneuvering Twilight’s queen into a trap. After that, the game fell apart, and Dash soon resigned.

“That was very good,” Twilight said. “You have a good eye for the board, setting up moves with payoffs several moves in the future. But you can’t just focus on capturing pieces. You have to control the board. At the end of the game it doesn’t matter how many of your opponent’s pieces you have – you have to checkmate their king.”

“I know.” Dash frowned at the board. “Pieces are easy to understand, though. They’re, like, right there. You can see them. How do you see ‘control of the board’?”

Twilight shrugged. “Lots of practice. That book will help you, too. It’s a sense you have to develop yourself, but the gambits and openings are like a path through the woods. Another game?”

Dash shook her head. She was already eager to dig into that little volume, to ream out its secrets and devour them. “Nah. You should play Nutmeg, though.”

“Oh? Think he’d mind a match?” Twilight peered over her shoulder at the stallion, who was sitting on a cushion with a paperback open before him.

“He’d love it. Don’t tell him I said so, but he thinks being around a princess is pretty neat.”

Twilight smiled. Her ears flapped like semaphore flags. “Well, then. Mister Nutmeg! Care for a match?”

Het set his book down on the return cart, stood, and stretched. “I was hoping you’d ask, princess.”

The board was reset, and Twilight did something odd. She picked up a white pawn and a black pawn, one in each hoof, and hid them behind her back for a moment. Then she held them out again, curled up, concealing the pieces within. Nutmeg tapped her right hoof hoof without hesitation, revealing the black pawn.

He noticed the question brewing on her lips. “A convenient, informal way to determine who gets what color, Miss Dash. Tournaments have stricter rules, but we’re playing for fun.”

Fun? Ha! Well, it was fun, Dash supposed. But she wasn’t watching for fun. She was watching to win! She settled down by Nutmeg’s side and whispered in his ear. “You gotta beat her.”

He nudged her with his wing and whispered back. “A friendly game.”

“So? You’re allowed to beat friends. I do it all the time!”

“Well, I’m not as competitive as you.”

Twilight watched their whisperfest from across the board. Something about it made her smile, and she cleared her throat. When their attention was back, she pushed her king’s pawn forward two spaces.

The first few moves proceeded about as Dash expected, with each player maneuvering into position and opening lines of freedom for their pieces. It wasn’t until the third move in that Twilight made a mistake.

She moved a pawn up with no cover. It was unprotected, just waiting for Nutmeg to take it with his pawn. None of her pieces could defend it; none of her pieces were within striking distance of defending it. She might as well have just picked it up off the board and given it to him.

He saw it, of course. His eyes fixed on it, then skipped around the rest of the board. Finally, he selected his pawn… and moved it forward, ignoring hers.

“Uhh…” Rainbow fidgeted. Her heart beat like a crazed dynamo, spinning and spinning, wanting to explode. She had to fight to keep her hooves still, not to reach out and pull Nutmeg’s pawn back and force him to make the right move. Her tail twitched like a flag in a hurricane.

He leaned over to her. “It’s a trap. She would lose the pawn, but it opens up more space for her to move and congests my pawns. It’s a common gambit. I chose not to accept it.”

Oh. Ooh. That’s what Twilight meant. Rainbow leaned back and studied the board anew. She imagined what it would look like if Nutmeg had taken the pawn, and for a moment in her mind she saw, dimly as like a lantern through fog, the shapes and paths and avenues it would have opened. The areas of control and areas of denial. She was so lost in the vision that she missed the next few moves entirely.

“Where did you learn to play?” Nutmeg asked. It shook Dash from her reverie.

“My parents got me a set as a filly.” Twilight considered the board for a moment, then moved her king out from behind its protective rank of pawns and into the field of play. A bold move, or a foolish one. A sign that the mid-game had begun. “That was back before I’d manifested any real magical potential. I think they wanted to encourage other gifts. And you?”

“When I was a foal, before I got my mark, my father worked in the airship yards in Cloudsdale. I would spend time with him, tinkering and learning, but some days the job required more skill or strength than had, so I would play in the parks. In Cloudsdale there are stallions – and mares too, though not as many – who sit in the shade beneath the ash trees and play all day long. One day, one of them saw me watching, and he let me sit with him while he played. And I’ve been trying to learn ever since.”

Twilight chuckled. “I’d say you’ve learned to play by now.”

“Only just.”

The board grew emptier with each move. Pieces fell to the wayside, captured or traded or sacrificed, until a few remained of each color. Dash could barely keep track of how the board shifted.

“There is a park in Canterlot where old stallions play,” Twilight said. She moved a pawn – the last one on the board – forward one square. The weakest piece of them all, yet every other piece on the board seemed to focus on it. Its fate would decide the game. “Perhaps every city has such a park.”

“The Mirror Lake Plaza, on Emerald Way?” Nutmeg moved his rook into the pawn’s file. Normally one of the strongest pieces, the rook somehow seemed weak there. It was not the fulcrum. It was secondary.

“You know it?” Twilight looked up from the board and at him. “Well, you must know many cities. Always travelling.” She moved the pawn forward again. 

“I suppose I do. But I know Canterlot very well. Before I bought the Orithyia, I lived there for many years, working my way up through the airship yards. As a scraper then a wainwright, then a rope-maker, then a sail master and envelope tender. Finally they let me work the engines, and I made them sing. Sometimes… I think I might’ve been happy there, staying in Canterlot, working the yards. Touching all the engines in all the airships that passed through her docks. But then I think of the Orithyia and all she’s gotten me, and I decide I’ve made the right choice.”

A small smile pinched the corner of Twilight’s mouth as he spoke. “Sometimes, I think back to when I was just a librarian, before these wings and that silly crown and this gaudy castle. Just Twilight Sparkle, unicorn mare, small-town librarian. Sometimes runs errands for Celestia. Has friends. I think I could’ve been happy with that. Before destiny stuck her muzzle in my business.”

“Destiny’s a bitch, isn’t she?”

Dash nearly choked. It was the first time she’d ever heard him mutter a crude word. In front of Twilight Sparkle, no less! “Nutmeg!”

“Apologies, Miss Dash. Something about reminiscing makes me talk like a dockworker again.”

“Well.” She settled her wings. “You should do it more often.”

Twilight grinned. It was the first truly amused expression Dash had seen on her face since the changeling business. “Far be it from me to condone such crass language, but I agree. Anyway, in Canterlot, did you know a stallion named Copper Kettle? He ruled the park like a king. Played one chess game a day, and everypony else would set up informal tournaments to see who got to challenge him. He never lost a match, as far as I know. Drew a few, but never lost.”

“He did lose a few,” Nutmeg said. His voice lost its laughing edge, turning soft. “Not often, and not that I ever saw. But nopony wins every game. He passed away a few years back.”

The sudden turn hit Dash like a punch in the gut. Her head drew back, ears tilting away.

Twilight didn’t respond for a bit. She studied the board, then eventually moved her pawn forward again. It was nearly touching the rook now. “You knew him?”

“He was too old to be a real friend, but yes.” Nutmeg moved his king into position to attack the pawn. “I was fortunate enough to play him a few times.”

“Ah.” Twilight studied the board for a time, then shook her head. “I see no way to win this match. Draw?”

“Accepted.” He held out his hoof, and she tapped it with hers. “Another?”

“Not today, I think.” Twilight looked up at the walls, where the marching sunlight had proceeded around them as the sun moved toward late afternoon. “I’m sorry for being such a poor host, but the past few days have been tiring.”

“Yeah?” Rainbow Dash stood, moved around until she sat by Twilight side, and stretched a wing over her. “You okay?”

Twilight pushed her muzzle under Rainbow’s chin and nuzzled her neck. “I will be. I have good friends to help me.”

Oh. Huh. Suddenly all Dash’s plans seemed quaint and selfish. “Uh, well…”

“I know.” Twilight sighed. “You’re leaving. I don’t begrudge you that. This… I feel a lot better now, Rainbow Dash. Thanks to you two. You’ve done more than enough.”

She swallowed. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Her head tilted, and Dash could tell she was looking at Nutmeg. “You two take care of each other, alright?”

“An airship crew always looks out for its own,” Nutmeg said. “Especially a crew of two.”

“Good to hear,” Twilight said. She tilted her muzzle up, pressing it against Dash’s ear to whisper. “And a good catch, too.”

Ugh. Dash felt her face heat with a sudden flush. It wasn’t like that. Why did everypony think it was like that? She mumbled something and pulled away before Twilight could embarrass her any more. The princess grinned as she retreated.

At least she had a new book, now. She'd have to mail it back before it was due, though – no sense in tempting pirates twice.

They had a few more stops in Ponyville before departing, but they made it to the train before the onset of night.