Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

Chess; but not really

It was a nice chessboard. A very large chessboard. Oddly misshapen, asymmetric, missing a few squares, and with clearly more colours than necessary, but it was still a nice chessboard. It was indeed a chessboard. That was his story, and he was sticking with it.

It even clearly had the pieces on it. Over there, that tower was - well, that was clearly a tower. And that statue on the other side of the garden, that one was clearly a knight. And that large writhing mass of tentacles and eyes, well... Huh... Maybe a queen? Yeah. Probably a queen.

It was very clearly a puzzle, there for him to solve. Yes, that large building on the other side of town was the enemy king, and indeed the one he stood on top of represented his own. Now he just needed to figure out a way to move that pile of rubble, down there to the left, diagonally to the right and up and then - Oh, oh great, wonderful, the ball of tentacles was moving on its own and had just eaten one of those little duck-shaped decorations that served as pawns. Fantastic. It was one on its team, no less! How was he supposed to plan if the pieces didn't play fair!?

Mad? He wasn't mad. He was absolutely not mad. Just because Scarlet Ribbon said he was mad, that didn't make him mad! She wasn't even a real doctor. Yet. And just because everyone else in town agreed with her, that didn't make her right. Lots of popular books were objectively terrible, after all. The voice of the masses had no bearing on the truth. He was not insane, no matter what everypony said.

Having eaten that shiny thing he'd found inside the river did not mean he was mad. He needed a place to keep it, after all. He didn't have any pockets, and he couldn't risk losing it, and there were animals around that could steal it. And what if he hid it, but then someone or something came along and took it? No, he had to keep it safe. That was why he'd eaten it. Now it was safely with him.

He'd also realised how he needed clothes. He needed pockets. Why did ponies almost exclusively wear either no clothes, or useless and purely cosmetic ones? Pockets were such a wonderful thing. He'd stolen a pair of pants and a jacket from the half-destroyed clothes shop just an hour after finding the shiny thing. The pants were a bit too large and the jacket a bit too tight, and maybe both were a mare's model, but now he had pockets.

There wasn't much in his pockets. A few bits in his pants, a couple chess pieces in his jacket, some of which were broken. But he had pockets.

Meanwhile, the queen ate the windmill. He hadn't actually figured out what piece exactly the windmill was, but not that it mattered much now that the tentacles had eaten it. Oh well. With the queen there he really couldn't win anymore. In fact, it looked like she would be coming for him next.

At least he'd tried.

He jumped off the building's roof, away from the chessboard and the steadily approaching mass of not particularly friendly-looking appendages. He'd be more lucky with the next puzzle he found.

Author's Note:

Proofreading by IncongruousAndHarmonious

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

This is starting to seem like a possible origin for Discord. Or evolution of Discord. Or, knowing him, both. Either way, more tentacles are rarely a good sign.

[link4]

10220874
i read the line about the tentacles an deyes, and im like... 'well... shit'

[Saix]

He might be crazy, but he's right about pockets.