//------------------------------// // Tactics and Strategy // Story: Cozy Glow: FIENDship is Magic // by RainbowDoubleDash //------------------------------// Today Moving out of check was easy, Tirek simply moved his king up one space. That hadn’t been the goal, of course; Cozy had wanted instead to move her knight to between her king and rook, where it now threatened Tirek’s pawn. One of his own rooks could take the knight if it did, of course, but Cozy wouldn’t move her knight until she’d first moved one of her own rooks into position to take Tirek’s rook in recompense. Royal Fork was smiling, seeing the ploy and probably hoping that Tirek didn’t. Tirek, himself, frowned. Not at the position, but rather the tactic. The math was simply not on his side; he could not move any of his pieces to save the pawn. But Cozy surely knew that and knew that Tirek would think nothing of abandoning the pawn; it had made it far, was only two spaces away from promotion, but it wasn’t worth the effort of trying to save. Tirek moved the rook protecting his pawn across the board, behind one of Cozy’s own remaining pawns. Royal Fork started sweating again. Not the sweat that came from a good, solid workout, but sweat that was full of fear. Only a fool couldn’t smell the difference. Cozy, on the other hand, was not sweating. She was grinning, apparently unsurprised by Tirek’s move. “So where is your father?” Tirek asked again. “You said out of town…” “Abyssinia,” Cozy responded. She moved her knight, obligingly capturing Tirek’s last pawn. “Ever heard of it?” “Yes, the feline land,” Tirek responded. He moved his other rook to behind Cozy’s other remaining pawn. The time had come to sweep the them from the board and remove their threat, and at the same time, start marching towards victory. Maneuvering his rooks into position would be time-consuming, but Cozy had been right: this game was won. Cozy continued to seem unperturbed. Royal Fork continued to tremble. “It was across the southern oceans from Gar-Centauria,” Tirek pressed on. “We had little contact with them. The felines did not like water.” Cozy chuckled. “Well, Daddy went down there to open up trade routes with them. Ever since Princess Luna came back, Equestria has been opening up again. Making friends with all our neighbors, no matter how far away they are.” Cozy moved her rook up. One of Tirek’s rooks could take it, but then Cozy could take it with her knight. Tirek did still consider it, though. A rook for a rook was not a bad trade when it would leave him with a rook and Cozy with merely a knight. Nevertheless, he instead moved the threatened rook down one space. “How long has he been gone for?” Tirek asked. Cozy had been reaching out towards her rook, but froze solid for several seconds. She took her eyes from the board, looking to Tirek. “Three years,” she whispered, then louder. “Three years.” Tirek was taken aback at that. “Three years?” He repeated. “It did not take me nearly as long to travel from Gar-Centauria to Equestria. The distances are not much different…” Cozy matched Tirek’s gaze, before closing her eyes and smiling brightly. Her hoof moved over to her knight, and she moved it down and over. “It’s just taking Daddy a little bit longer, is all,” she said. “But we have a chess game to get back to. He promised me we’d finish it when he got back.” Tirek felt his eyes drifting over to Royal Fork, looking for some sign from the stallion that he believed any of this to be true. But his eyes were instead glued to the game. “I even have the game right here,” Cozy said, holding up a neatly folded, pristine sheet of paper. Her smile dropped and her eyes grew cold. “There was a scare this morning, a stupid maid cleaned up the game, put it away! Even though everypony is supposed to know that they’re never supposed to do that! So Uncle Fork fired her.” Cozy held the piece of paper close to her chest. “And thankfully Uncle Fork had the game all written down already, so we could put back all the pieces where they were supposed to be.” Tirek was a lot of things. He was ruthless. A centaur had to be ruthless. He was intelligent and cunning. He was powerful, none could deny that, and if they did he would be more than happy to show them how mistaken they were. He could even be charming when he wanted to be. But Tirek was not cruel, not without reason, anyway. Not when there was no benefit to be had. So while he could see the truth of the matter plainly, Tirek decided not to press the issue. Instead, he nodded as he moved a rook down and captured a pawn. Cozy moved her knight again. She was angling, clearly, to put his king into check. Tirek found himself frowning once more, however. Surely she had seen that… Tirek moved his rook, taking Cozy’s last pawn…and putting her king in check. Royal Fork sucked in a breath. “Cozy…” “I know, Uncle Fork,” Cozy said. “Don’t worry! I got this.” She couldn’t move her king up since that would put her in the path of Tirek’s other rook, so she moved it diagonally down. Tirek responded by advancing his other rook, putting her back in check. So she moved her king diagonally down once more. Tirek moved his other rook across, and once more the king was in check. From here, the next move was obvious: Cozy would circle her king around her knight and get behind it. But that would only result in trapping the king. Victory for Tirek was inevitable… Cozy instead moved her king diagonally back once more, right to the edge of the board. “What?” Tirek asked. “Cozy!” Royal Fork exclaimed, his voice high. “But – he – he can…” Cozy frowned, looking at the board. “Oh,” she said. "Oopsies.” She looked to the stallion. “I’m soooo sorry, Uncle Fork! But me winning was always a long shot anyway. I really don’t think I could have even if Mister Tirek was really bad at the game, and he’s not!” She shrugged once more. “Look on the bright side, at least this way is faster!” Tirek stared at the board, then to Cozy, then finally to Royal Fork, who stared back with pupils shrank down to the size of pinpricks. Without breaking eye contact, Tirek lifted his rook, and moved it to check Cozy’s king – which no longer had any place to go that wouldn’t put it right back into check. “Shah mat,” he said in Centauri, and then translated: “The king is dead.” “Checkmate,” Cozy agreed. Royal Fork finally remembered that he was a pony and not a statue, and so had the ability to move. He let out a shriek, turning with wings beating and taking to the air – or trying to. Before he could get more than a few feet, Tirek reached out with telekinesis and seized him, pulling the pony into one hand. He tried to resist, but Tirek opened his mouth and called upon the magic taught to him by Sendak the Elder. It was over in just a few moments. Royal Fork’s magic was drained, leaving him weak and feeble and empowering Tirek just a little bit more. Tirek placed him in a bubble and levitated him away…but then turned to Cozy. His eyes narrowed. “You threw the match,” he intoned. “More than that…you set up your own checkmate. You only pretended to challenge me…but losing was your strategy the entire time. That was the reason why you wanted to even play me at all: to make certain that he lost.” Cozy pursed her lips, then smiled and nodded. “Yup! Gee, you really are pretty smart! Being a thousand years old hasn’t done anything to you! I knew you’d figure it out.” “You betrayed your own uncle!” Tirek cracked the knuckles of one hand with his other. “But why?” Cozy’s face screwed up. At first it was a frown, but soon there was boiling, seething rage on it as she threw down the neatly folded paper that contained her father’s game. “Because he betrayed me first!”