//------------------------------// // Alabasterdashery // Story: Appledashery // by Just Essay //------------------------------// “Ohcrapohcrapohcrap!” Rainbow Dash rolled over, stood up, and gawked at herself. Her coat and mane were painted bone-white by the dense powdery flour covering her from head to tail. She tried brushing off her forelimb, but the layers covering her blue body were too thick. At this rate, she would leave a trail of white sediment anywhere she flew, drawing the monsters to her hiding place. “Craponluna’sbedpan!” She hissed. “I thought I heard something, Durandal.” “You look, you lazy oaf!” the basilisk hissed. Rainbow sensed him pointing a scaly limb from the edge of her peripheral vision. “I’m trying to come up with a strategy here!” “With an incomplete board?! Ha! That’s pretty likely!” The cyclops turned around, tilting his horned head to look in the direction of the recent sneeze. “Let’s see, it happened somewhere over here…” Rainbow Dash felt her heart pumping a mile-per-minute. She glanced over the massive shoulder of Polyph as the beastly biped shuffled about in his granite stool. While looking, she caught the tops of several petrified buffalo’s skulls. They were all ghostly pale in rocky sheen. Without a second thought, Rainbow Dash jerked up on her hindquarters and threw her forelimbs into a hoof-rearing pose, sticking her wings straight out behind her. She put on a dumb smile and gazed towards the opposite walls. “Durandal?!” Polyph boomed. Something the size of a wagon drifted down at Rainbow Dash, then enclosed around her from all sides. She was soon being lifted in the cyclops’ greasy fingers. The pegasus remained locked in a frozen prance. “You stupid snake! Here it is!” “Here what is?” the basilisk hissed. “Your stupid missing knight, of course!” Polyph said, and suddenly Rainbow was being hoisted over the checkerboard granite full of frozen buffalo and griffons. “It fell over into your flour bag! You know, for a freak with so many legs, you’re awfully clumsy!” “Let me see that!” Rainbow Dash sensed a pale glow out the edge of her eyes. Taking a deep breath through her nostrils, she clenched her eyes shut and prayed that her lids were dusted white like the rest of her body. Polyph’s hand came to a stop, and she felt herself dangling before a rancid, cold pair of nostrils. The air filled with a hissing sound, and a scaly nose brushed up against her limb-locked body. “Hmmmm…” Durandal muttered aloud, undoubtedly observing all of Rainbow’s non-buffalo features. “Funny. She doesn’t look like the--” “What, the other pegasus?!” Polyph’s voice threw in the direction of the buffalo statue that Durandal had stuck stone “wings” to. “Seems like a perfect match to me!” “But… but…” The nostrils sniffed and exhaled against Rainbow’s tight muzzle. “Something’s… different about this…” “Ohhhhhhhhhhhh quit yer stalling!” Polyph slapped Rainbow down onto the stretch of granite. The pegasus nearly bit her tongue as the shock flew through her body. It took all her strength not to loosen up like a numb ragdoll right then and there. “Let’s get this game starting already!” “But--” “And no tricks, Durandal! I wanna win your lair honorably! Don’t make me turn you into a million suitcases!” The basilisk was silent for a while. “Hmmph… fine. But first.” Claws scraped against the table. Rainbow felt a gust of disturbed air. She almost trembled. Razor-sharp fingers gripped her head on boths sides and twisted. Thinking fast, Rainbow scooted her bottom hooves so that her upper body matched the movement. “...lemme make it face the right end of the board, you idiot. Ah… there we go.” Rainbow opened her eyes, relieved to be looking towards the cyclops’ end of the table. She exhaled heavily, panting her breath without flexing her powdered feathers. A bison’s bone-white derriere stood in front of her, and she was flanked on one side with a meaty bison standing atop a block of stone and Churning Bag to her left. The pegasus sucked her breath in, her eyes darting towards the left, blinking. Churning Bag had a mucus-coated stalactite planted on the top of his petrified head. It wasn’t positioned in the right spot to mimic a unicorn horn. To Rainbow’s guestimation, it vaguely resembled a bishop’s hat. She winced, feeling her extremities trembling. “Durandal…” “Fine! Fine! Hold your horn…” The basilisk held his breath for a while, then finally spat, “F2 to F3.” A pair of scaly hands grabbed the tiny female buffalo in front of Churning and advanced him by a single square. “Now we’re talking…”