//------------------------------// // Chapter 28 // Story: Auntie Tia's Matchmaking Service // by Shaslan //------------------------------// The clunk of the pawn on the board somehow felt quieter than the thudding of Cozy Glow’s own heart. Thirty moves in, and only a couple of pieces lost each. The aptitude that her opponent displayed had left Cozy stunned. Flurry Heart played like a master, but she made it seem effortless. Seemingly, all of her attention was on their conversation. She would sip her drink, flip idly through one of the books she levitated over to her, exchange another slightly barbed comment with Cozy, and then make yet another move that even Cozy herself had not predicted accurately. For the first time in a long time, Cozy Glow actually had to pay attention to a game of chess. It was brilliant. “So tell me,” Flurry Heart said carelessly, toying with one of the pawns she had stolen from Cozy Glow early on in the game, before Cozy had realised quite the level at which they were playing. “You’re a lawyer. For someone of your history, that’s an unusual career choice, wouldn’t you say?” Cozy Glow froze, her hoof suspended over the board. Flurry Heart was asking about her past. Nopony ever asked about her past. Not directly. They would dance around the subject, making sure she knew that they knew exactly who she was and what she had done. But no one ever wanted to discuss it. The topic was too…tainted, too dirty, for polite society. But the Princess of the Crystal Empire was here, demanding answers. She swallowed. “Well, Princess—” “—Oh, come on, I told you to call me Flurry. I’d say we were at that point now, wouldn’t you?” Cozy Glow suppressed a smile. This mare kept her constantly off-balance, never letting her get a sentence out uninterrupted. “Well, Flurry, justice is…very important to me.” She paused, and then made her move, in truth still paying more attention to the internal construction of her next sentence. “This is rather raking over old coals, but I was…well, I was sentenced to life imprisonment. Without a trial. It was only a fluke that Princess Twilight took it into her head to release me and the others later on. I want to make sure that the Equestrian legal system treats other ponies more fairly than it treated me.” Flurry Heart nodded, and moved a celestial bishop without looking at the board. “That’s a noble goal, and I’d like to see similar laws enshrined at home once I’m in power. But — and forgive me if I’m wrong — I’ve read some of your cases. And those aren’t usually the types of client you take on. You seem to deal in high profile divorces, civil suits, libel claims. That sort of thing. Lucrative, but not particularly concerned with justice.” Despite herself, Cozy Glow found herself blushing. “Those are the cases that exist in Canterlot,” she scowled. “I take what there is.” She shoved a pawn one square closer to Flurry Heart. “Really?” Flurry Heart pushed. “Because it seems like you just take what pays.” “Princess Twilight and her friends have controlled the kingdom for over thirty years,” Cozy Glow snapped, her eyes flickering over the board. She pushed her pawn forward again. There was a slim chance to reclaim a lost piece, if Flurry remained focused on their words instead of on the game. “In that time perhaps five major threats have arisen. Of the three which took place after I was unfrozen, one was from non-sentient purple ooze that hardly needed a legal defence, one was the lava rhinososauruses who were massacred by Twilight’s pet students and completely obliterated, and one was Sombra’s followers, and they…” she tailed off, and her anger faded into apprehension. “They were defeated, and banished into Sombra’s void. By me.” Flurry Heart finished the sentence for her, a wicked glint in her eye. Finally, she looked down at the board. Cozy Glow followed the Princess’ gaze, and her eyes widened in shock. Flurry Heart moved her pegasus knight in and took Cozy Glow’s lunar princess, left undefended by the departure of the pawn she had so rashly moved. “Exactly,” Cozy Glow echoed wonderingly, still gaping at the board. She had been goaded into removing her focus from the game. She, Cozy Glow, had been manipulated into making a mistake a foal could have seen coming. And it had been done by a princess. One of Equestria’s twee, friendship-focused idiots. Except…it didn’t seem that this Princess was very similar to the others Cozy had met. “I thought that might get your back up,” Flurry Heart smirked, her expression mischievous. Blowing out a little air, Cozy Glow shook her head. “I…underestimated you.” “Ponies often do,” said Flurry Heart lightly. “Youngest princess, least senior, a born alicorn; they think I’ve been spoon-fed everything by my mother and my aunt.” She met Cozy Glow’s eyes and smiled again. “They’re wrong.” “Do you regret what you did to the Sombrites?” Cozy Glow asked. “Sealing them up in the darkness for another thousand years was a…cruel thing to do.” She had considered wording it more gently, but then decided to push ahead. Flurry Heart was not being gentle; why should she behave any differently? Flurry Heart levitated Cozy Glow’s lunar princess off the board and examined it for a moment. “I could have been more merciful, it’s true.” “How do you know they couldn’t have been reformed?” Cozy Glow persisted. “I was only imprisoned for fifteen years, and it drove me all but insane. A thousand years is unthinkable.” She shuddered. “You were conscious then, all that time?” Flurry Heart’s attention was well and truly caught now. “I’d heard some rumours to that effect, but to have it confirmed from the horse’s mouth is another thing altogether.” Looking away, Cozy Glow set her jaw. “I was. It was a…deeply unpleasant time in my life.” Flurry Heart leaned forward, the clack of her piece on the board loud in the quiet. “Tell me about it.” Breathing out slowly through her nose, Cozy considered the question. She could refuse, storm out, rage at the Princess for her cruelty and her condescension — or she could engage. See how this game — how both these games of wit played out. Learn what Flurry Heart’s strategy was. This different species of Princess…it intrigued her like nothing else had ever done. “It was torment,” she said simply. “Fifteen years, countless days and infinite hours, shut in a cellar with no light, no sound, no nothing. Just me in my frozen body, trapped, seething with hatred for Princess Twilight Sparkle and everything she stood for. My mind chased itself around in circles, over and over, day after day — no rest, no sleep — just hate, hate, hate.” She paused, her breathing suddenly ragged. Clenching her eyes tight shut, she tried to run over one of Doctor Healing Word’s mantras in her head. I control my own actions. I make my own fate. I am not bound to exact vengeance — I am not controlled by hate. She ran through it twice more before her breath evened out, and she opened her eyes to see Flurry Heart studying her openly. “And when you were unfrozen?” Cozy Glow answered in a monotone, all emotion fled. “I tried to kill Twilight Sparkle. Being a twelve-year-old without any magic, of course, I failed. I was locked up, and she tried in a desultory sort of way to visit me and talk it out. Didn’t work, obviously.” “So what did you do?” “I escaped.” Cozy shrugged, and made another move; a pegasus knight this time. “Wasn’t hard. I went north; I had some sort of idea that I could find an artefact that would help me get the power I needed to take revenge. The Alicorn Amulet, something like that.” “And did you find it?” Flurry Heart was looking at the board instead of at Cozy. “No,” Cozy laughed, but the sound was without mirth. “I couldn’t even afford the train fare north. I ended up trying to rob a bank.” “Ah,” breathed Flurry. “I think I’ve heard about that incident.” Cozy Glow snorted. “Who hasn’t? It was all over the papers for months. ‘The Element of Generosity talks down child psychopath.’ ‘Element of Generosity gives crazed killer a second chance.’ ‘Rarity saves Canterlot.’ I remember all those headlines.” “And then she adopted you.” “And then she adopted me.” Cozy Glow was beginning to lose her patience. “What of it? I don’t want to talk about my mother.” “Alright.” Flurry raised her hooves in a gesture of peace. “You’ve taken your turn. Why don’t we talk about mine?” “Your what? Your mother?” “Mm-hmm.” Cozy Glow dropped her earth pony warrior six squares to the left of where it had been and looked into the Princess’ big blue eyes. “Alright. What was it like to grow up as an alicorn?” “Dreadful.” Snorting derisively, Cozy Glow flipped a wing. “Get out of here.” “No, really.” Flurry Heart leant in. “Why do you think I agreed to this date? It’s not just because you’re an interesting pony — though you certainly are. It’s because we have something in common.” “And what’s that?” “A really bucked-up childhood.” Flurry Heart crossed her forelegs. “Everywhere I’ve ever gone, I’ve been fenced in on every side. Rules, traditions, court strictures. I’m not sure I’ve ever been alone. A maid comes with me to the bathroom. I have six fully armoured guards waiting for me outside this chess club. My parents and my aunt control where I go, who I see, what I think.” She waved a wing. “Oh, they mean well, but that doesn’t mean I’m any less trapped by it.” Ears flicking the aspersion away, Cozy Glow rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on. A privileged upbringing — boo-hoo. How does that equate to how I grew up?” Shoving a piece across the board, Flurry Heart kept her eyes locked on Cozy’s. “I know what it’s like to be the smartest pony in the room. In every room, no matter where you go. I know what it’s like to have the press watch your every move, like vultures, just waiting for you to slip up. I know what it’s like to destroy things — no, I’m not kidding.” Her voice rose a little in anger. “I’ve had alicorn magic since before I could walk. I’ve torn down palaces by sneezing. I know what it’s like to have ponies fear you — to see you as a ticking time bomb. Who could understand that better than us?” Smiling viciously, Cozy’s eyes combed the board. At last, the Princess was the one who was getting upset. “So that makes your decision to send three hundred misguided ponies into the realm of shadows for a thousand years morally justified? Because you had a rough time growing up?” “I did what I thought best,” Flurry Heart snarled. “I was twelve.” Tilting her head, Cozy Glow smirked. Every nerve ending was on fire. She could feel the room pulsing with Flurry’s anger. She finally felt alive. “And look what you got from it,” she needled. “A cutie mark and a stained glass window in Canterlot — what more could you want?” “A stained glass window, yes. The first of many. And nightmares,” Flurry Heart spat. “Fifteen years of screaming night terrors about the howls of those souls that I damned, that I sent down there in a fit of childish anger with a spell I scarcely understood. Fifteen years of guilt — of fear that I might do it again — of a city full of ponies too afraid of me to be my friends.” Her pale pink sides were heaving, and she raised a wing to hide her eyes. Cozy Glow felt an unexpected spike of empathy. That was the story of her life. Ponies too afraid of me to be my friends. Maybe she had gone too far. Hesitantly, she raised a hoof to comfort the princess. But Flurry Heart had already remastered herself. She shrugged. “I can’t change it now. What’s done is done. I made my choice, and I have to live with it. All I can do is try to choose differently in future, and put things in place so that in nine hundred and eighty-five years, when the Sombrites emerge, Auntie Tia and Auntie Luna have the ability to deal with them more gently than I did.” She looked down at the board once more, and silently made her move. Following her example, Cozy Glow looked down too. She studied the state of the game for a few moments in silence, the distraction of Flurry’s stormy emotions finally ended — and it was only then that she saw it. Cozy’s heart swelled within her. There. Six moves away, but coming as inexorably as a freight train. Flurry Heart had her solar princess in checkmate. There was no escape. For the first time in her long, angry life, somepony had beaten Cozy Glow in a game of chess. Cozy Glow, breathing hard, looked up from the board and into the alicorn’s soft blue eyes. Flurry Heart shot her a smile — gleeful and sneaky all at once — she knew exactly what she had done. Shaking her head in wonderment, Cozy Glow reached out a hoof and gently tipped her own solar princess onto its side. “You got me.” The princess shook her blue-and-pink curls and beamed. “That was good fun,” she said lightly. “Maybe we’ll have a rematch sometime soon…it’s been a while since I’ve played anypony who put up such a fight.” Eagerly, perhaps even a little desperately, Cozy Glow agreed. “Yes, please. I — I would like that, very much.”