When the Stars are Right

by Broken Phalanx

1 Chess

It was 35 degrees Celsius in winter, but there were bigger mysteries afoot.

Deep within the castle's living and labyrinthine guts, just beside an unlit fireplace and an array of unfathomably pointy implements ostensibly designed to better research magic, stands a stallion.

Correction, what appears to be a stallion: it certainly breathes like one, albeit on an erratic schedule (15.6 seconds of utter stillness followed by perhaps 2 and a half minutes of heavy and clearly unconscious breathing), but the fact it had not otherwise moved in the slightest, not even with the barest fluttering of an eyelid, was debasing the notion of basic enchantment-

“Thou write in garbled and lengthy prose, little thing; to flaunt great intellect is to diminish it,” says a myriad number of voices in chorus, and in a moment Twilight has already written a chunk of the statement into her research notes unconsciously; muttering what you plan to inscribe works perfectly well until you’re being used as a mouthpiece for an alien entity. She has time for an impatient sigh before her mouth is again wrenched open and words not of her design spill forth once more.

“What of that slab? Another of your kind brought it forth, together you repositioned pieces of dead matter upon it.”

The chess board? I didn’t play chess with anypony but Spike, why does it think another pony was here? It could’ve been a mischievous Changeling impersonating me, but, wait, that doesn’t work; I enchanted the doors to only open to Starlight, myself, the girls, or Spike! And Thorax, I suppose. And all the rest of Starlight’s friends. And Celestia, Luna, my BBBFF, and Cadenc-

“Twas the scaly one,” Twilight’s own mouth mutters laconically, albeit in a voice that bore no resemblance to the purple princess’.

My inner sanctuary’s woeful lack of defenses aside . . .

“Spike isn’t a pony,” she finds herself replying automatically, before berating herself for her slip-up; it could play at being benign (or, given the thing’s utterly lackluster display of abilities during the last few experiments, banal), but it would take something stronger than the three glasses of ‘Bearhuggers Cider’ Twilight had downed (ostensibly to clear her ringing head) to dispel those initial moments of agonizing clarity.

***

A nose shouldn’t be bleeding like this, Twilight finds herself pondering, as if such a distraction may blunt the display of atrophic flesh before her eyes and stultify the mounting horror building within her brain; it may have worked, petty though the defense is, but for the fact it’s maddening attention affixes her, leaving her inexorably trapped in a state beyond even lunacy. Telepathy wasn’t the brightest of ideas; as a matter of fact, I think they specifically recommended against it-

And then her mental world is gone, dashed against eternal shores by raging tides, and with it shatter all the thousands of childish fears like monsters under the bed and Magic Kindergarten; what little remains is an unbreakable sphere that is so fundamentally Twilight it begins to inexorably drink the rushing waves of incoherent thought in a desperate attempt to pluck reason from madness.

And for a moment, she succeeds. Horrifically.

“I feast upon the cadaverific heavens, suckle upon the corpse-light of dead stars. I am the doom of a universe devoid of romance, and when the final atoms split free of their nuclear embrace, I shall consume them. I hunger,” and the sphere of Twilight seems to crack as the pressures of a vengeful sea press around her oasis of sanity, until, finally, the Totality of the Thing’s attention pins her fragile raft of Twilight-ness, and something heavy descends.

This is the end, Twilight thinks to herself, the concept dull and remarkably peaceful despite its implications. For a moment she shares a weighty kinship with insects of all kinds; there is nothing but the daylight, then the shadow of a descending hoof, and then-

A nudge back into the shallows and a distant snort of amusement, the sort a compassionate pony with a streak of sadism might give upon witnessing foals acting foolish before running off to aid in extinguishing the flames of childish failure. As for the push, it is a sensation not dissimilar to a starfish being plucked from the suffocating beach and returned to the welcoming seas.

There are words, Twilight is certain, but even this is too much for her overtaxed mind, and she gratefully slips into dreamless sleep.

***

Don’t you go playing the innocent in this whole charade, buster! I remember what you . . . uh, thought? Anypony who monologues like that is up to no good. And you put Starlight out of commission! Well, I suppose Starlight put Starlight out of commission, ignoring that sticky-note I put on you and what-have-you, but still!

“She’s still repeating the same thing over and over,” Twilight found herself muttering aloud. “Biggest smile in the world, surrounded by fuzzy animals of all shapes and sizes, and the only thing out of her muzzle is ‘The Horror’. On the plus side, Fluttershy’s out of the house more frequently. Shame it’s just to visit the farm, drink cider, and sulk, but eh.”

“What does this have to do with the board or Spike the not-pony?”

Honestly, it was getting irritating, speaking for two.

Maybe if I answer its question, it’ll shut up and let me science in peace. Oh! Or maybe it’ll let slip some of its nefarious plans!

“It’s a game board for Chess,” Twilight says initially, as if that alone were a sufficient explanation; the only reply is an uncomfortably durable silence that seems to dilate time around it, a veritable black hole of ignorant intelligence.

“Oh. Oh! You don’t know what Chess is! Well-”

The next few hours are filled with a wealth of facts and stories, a borderline collegial thesis on the history of a board game. Somehow, between explaining how the weakest pieces got the colloquial name ‘Pöne’, a diatribe on the ‘Dark Masters’ that plagued the game’s meta but a few scant centuries ago, and a brief overview of her own (hoof-carved) set and the legendary figures it depicted, there was even a brief demonstration on how each piece moved and how to play the game.

“-upon which Prince Diadem the 34th declared the naming of such pieces as ‘Bishops’ profane, resulting in a 27,000 pony strong protest that lasted for 6 days and dealt over 32000 bits in damages-”

A very brief demonstration.

And then silence, when all that can be said, has. One can almost hear the pendulum ticks of time’s advance, every second gobbled away by inevitability even as the two figures stood at an intellectual impasse.

“So. . .” the Thing says, the confusion palpable despite its myriad monotone voices, “‘Tis a game for imbeciles and fools alike?”

“What?! No!” Twilight splutters back, outrage and no slight amount of hurt tinging her words. “It’s a scholarly game, a smart game, the sort Princess Celestia plays while-” she pauses for a moment, reflecting on a thousand happy little bonding moments shared over the game, or of how Celestia would sometimes play it with the diplomats she viewed as friends, or, more recently, the Solar Princess would contest her sister and simply waste the time in silent yet mutual joy. Has Celestia ever lost a game of Chess?

No… but has she ever won one? Huh, that’s some food for thought.

“Less than 270 billion movements are plausible within the first five turns: it is as solvable as the Tic-Tac-Toe game Spike the not-pony played a few hours ago. Moreso, actually. What purpose does this ‘Chess’ possess, besides the education of dullards?” the Thing asks, and for a seething moment the only inhibition Twilight has to smashing the board over the Thing’s stallion host-body is that the chess set was a gift.

“It’s not intended to be ‘solved’, except on a match by match basis,” Twilight spits through teeth grit tightly enough to prevent interruption. “It’s supposed to emulate a battle, a sort of strategy game: specifically, my board is an homage to one of Nightmare Moon’s and Princess Celestia’s skirmishes.”

Which you would know, had you been paying attention!

Then Twilight inhales deeply, exhales, and awaits a response with as much composure as can be mustered by one whose entire species’ intelligence has been insulted.

A minute passes in horrified silence.

“What… who… represents the pawn?”

There is a quiet chill to the voice, now not nearly so loud and legion, and for a moment the world seems somewhat wrong, like a snake hiding in a bail of ice-cream.

“Oh,” Twilight says once the feeling passes, “That would be the foot soldiers of each side. Just some random ponies here and there.”

“And… The Queen. They are…?” And there it is again, a cold sort of condemnation that wriggles through the air like living icicles, but the first time just a moment ago is enough inoculation for Twilight to simply shrug it off.

“Well, technically, it’s the Princesses. Some boards put them as the Kings’, but most renditions put a throne or something for that.”

“Why does your own species see some of their own as expendable?”

Huh. Didn’t expect that.

Talking for two is thirsty work; lazily, a bottle of water, encased in purple magic, drifts over to Twilight. Carefully, Twilight sups the water, fully prepared to hurl it away should her… ‘guest’ decide that now would be an ample time to speak.

Seconds stretch to a minute as a reply is carefully formulated, tested for weaknesses, and is found to be sufficient. ‘Invigorating’ is rarely the word a sane individual would use to describe having every one of their words being scrutinized for weakness, but Twilight was one of those poor souls who found intense joy in crafting and defending a thesis.

Shame that I’m experiencing this because of some abomination from beyond the stars, but, eh, gotta take the good with the bad.

“We don’t see our own as ‘expendable’. But, if a threat arises, most are willing to defend the one who ensures tomorrow, happens. In this context, the Princesses,” Twilight replied, only to realize (to her chagrin) that a conversation intended to halt communication had instead promoted it.

“Truly? Because there is evidently a mathematical notation on the worth of each piece, as you’ve informed me; one queen to nine ‘Pönes’. And yet, one life is one life.”

“True,” Twilight replied slowly, even as her brain worked feverishly at trying to predict the inevitable twists and turns of logic this debate would spawn, “but there is more value in the living than just ‘being alive’.”

I mean, a pony’s life is worth more than an ant's, firstly...

“Ideally, yes,” and the Thing’s words are as slow yet inexorable as a glacier, smashing and crushing resistance, such that there is. “Thus a game that degenerates the condition of the living to mere numbers is all the more monstrous-”

“Enough!” Twilight cries out, wrenching control of her own vocal cords in a feat of anger enhanced focus and willpower. “It’s a GAME, a distraction from boredom! Nothing more! Simulation isn’t the same thing as reality, and a simulated life isn’t equal to a real one!”

“Oh.”

Oh.

And so the conversation ended, regret and unspoken apologies twisting in the gut of at least one participant.

***

Sometime later, a thought prickled at Twilight’s mind and simply refused to be forgotten.

Has Celestia ever won a game of Chess?

There are a few false starts, as the quill twitches in Twilight’s grasp and ruins more than a few pieces of parchment, but this feels intensely personal, something even Spike shouldn’t be made privy to lightly. And finally, in wavering yet legible script, Twilight manages, ‘Dear Princess Celestia…’

Author's Note:

I'm not going to lie, I wrote this story to get it out of my head; that being said, I hope you enjoy.

Persons looking for a motive will be ridiculed and persons trying to find a moral will be banished.

Comments

[Starlight Nova]

How do I know this story won't die after only one chapter?

[Broken Phalanx]

8488415
By the fact I already have about 8 chapters written for it/being edited now/already on the site, and am finishing the rough-draft for the epilogue at this point.

I was getting irritated by random stuff interfering with writing, so I do it in bulk now and edit later; it's easier that way.

EDIT: If you happen to know a way I can upload an image from my comp as proof, I would literally present it.

[Mr Extra]

8488415
This one speaks as one thrice burned, but I totally understand.

8488427
Glad to hear it's already done. I'm trying to do a similar thing with what I'm writing, mostly cause I'm really inconsistent.

Overall pretty good. Got tripped up by a few minor things but it's solid.