The Origins of a Chessmaster

        The orange rays of the scorching desert sun peered down from the western horizon onto the filth-ridden streets of a town in decay, in a hostile land far away from Equestria’s borders. To both sides of the road, mud brick buildings stood worn and tattered, and along it walked somber-faced ponies who plodded their ways home past gangs of sickly beggars and murderous cutthroats.  Piles of garbage and putrid waste festered in pools under open windows; their stench permeated the air, as did the sound of flies buzzing around them.

        Amongst the crowd was a young unicorn filly, who traveled down the road with calm and graceful strides, her flowing white mane and tail dancing in the dusty breeze with every tread. They were streaked with the same gray that colored her eyes, which scanned their grizzly surroundings with cold indifference. Her flank bore only her coat’s light blue hue; no mark was there to be found. Yet, the lack of a mark did naught to bruise her ego, for she was a filly who dreamed of ruling the world. Her name was Checkmate Master. She had just returned home from school with her father, and although very few children — fillies especially — in her home town were lucky enough to receive a formal education, she regarded these streets as her most important teacher.

        She came to a modest abode, whose mud brick walls were clean and whose piles of waste were hidden underneath shrubbery. A small set of stairs led up to a beige wooden door. The brass knob was held in the magical grip of Checkmate’s father, Marionette, a swarthy unicorn stallion whose face was gaunt, whose unblinking eyes were always bloodshot, and whose lean frame was corded with small but dense muscle.

        Marionette magically swung the door open and gestured for his daughter to go through. “After you, dear.” He, as did all other ponies where he came from, spoke in an emphatic accent whose syllables were staccato and whose r’s were trilled.

        Checkmate looked up Marionette with a smile as unfeeling as her gaze. “Thank you, father.” She looked forward and continued on her way.

        Awaiting her was a spacious living room, lit by the fire of an oil lamp which hung down from the ceiling by brass chain links. Beneath the glimmering light was a rickety oaken table, surrounded by a gang of six hardy stallions who bickered amongst themselves over granite wine-filled flagons and a board game that caught Checkmate’s eye. The set was hewn from various colors of quartz. Half the pieces were black, the other half white, and the board’s colors arranged in an eight-by-eight pattern of alternating white and black squares.

        Checkmate approached the earth pony stallion who sat behind the black pieces and examined the board with the eye that wasn’t covered by an eyepatch.

        The stallion snorted and snapped his gaze to Checkmate. “What do you want, girl?”

        Marionette spat on the floor and glared at the stallion, with his face contorted to an angry grimace. “That is my daughter. My favorite daughter. Treat her with respect.”

        The one-eyed stallion blinked. “C’mon, boss. It’s just a little filly. I don’t know why you want me to be so nice to her.”

        Marionette spat again. “You’ve worked for me for years. You ought to know better than to disobey me. My name is worth more than you and your entire family put together. You disrespect my kin again, and I put yours in the ground. Understand?”

        “Hm.” Silence loomed in the air for a while as the thug glared at his boss. Then, he looked to Checkmate, whose polite smile had not faltered. After giving her a once over, he snorted again. “Alright, little girl. You don’t seem so bad. I’m sorry for acting that way.”

        Checkmate merely blinked, her countenance unwavering. “Oh, it’s no problem, sir. I just wanted to ask you what game you were playing.”

        “Chess.”

        “Can you tell me about it? I would so dearly love to play.”

        The eyepatched stallion shared a quizzical glance with the one on the other side of the board. After a shrug, he looked back to Checkmate. “Why don’t you ask your father?”

        Checkmate looked up to Marionette. “Can I?”

        Marionette smiled sweetly at her, then put his hoof atop her head and ruffled her mane. “Of course you can, sweetheart.”

        Checkmate’s smile grew slightly wider, and far more genuine, as Marionette put his hoof back down. “Thank you so much. When can I start?”

        “Well, I don’t want to interrupt their game. There’s a wager on it, and they’re almost done. I think your sister has a set. You get along well with your sister, don’t you?”

        “I do. Very well.”

        “Then borrowing it shouldn’t be a problem. Come meet me in my room when you have it, okay?”

        She nodded. “Okay, father. I’ll go right away.”

        With gleeful gait, she started her way down the hallway to the right of the living room, with Marionette following shortly behind. As her father was near to his bedroom door, she heard a muttering from what sounded like the eyepatched stallion. “That filly gives me the creeps.” She stopped, then turned her head back to face her father.

        “Did you hear that?”

        Marionette blinked. “No, dear. What was it?”

        Checkmate took a moment to consider her choices. Then, she chuckled. “Nothing. It was nothing.”

        She continued her way until she reached the end of the hall. To the door to her right, she heard the giggling of a filly just a couple years older than herself. With magical grip, she twisted the doorknob and eased it open. There was her sister, a unicorn by the name of Bellatrix, whose appearance resembled her own in every way save for a slightly lighter coat and the image of a jester’s hat on her flank. The young filly stood on her hind legs, too focused on the leather balls that she juggled with her forehooves to notice her sister’s arrival.

        Checkmate took two steps into the room. “Hello there, Bellatrix.”

        Her sister jolted in place, falling flat on her haunches as the balls plummeted down to the ground and scattered to the sides of the room, one of them hitting a small wooden chest in the corner, and another bouncing on top of a flax-stuffed mattress which was covered by a gray woolen blanket and pillow. She stammered as she fumbled her way back up on her hooves.

        “Ch-checkmate! Wha-… what brings you here?”

        “Have you ever heard of a game called ‘chess’, sister?”

        Bellatrix took a shaky breath. “Yeah. W-why do you ask?”

        “Do you still have that chess set mommy gave you before the ghosts took her away?”

        Bellatrix whimpered at the mention of her long-lost mother. She squeezed her eyes shut and nodded her head with ferocious vigor.

        Checkmate’s smile turned devilish. “Give it to me. I want it. I want it now.”

        After another shaky breath, Bellatrix ran to the chest in the corner of the room and held it firmly in her forelegs’ embrace. “No! You can’t have it. Mommy gave it to me special. You can’t take it, you can’t!”

        “Why not?” She took several steps towards her sister. “It’s mine. I should have it.”

        “What!? No, it’s not!”

        “It is, sister.”

        “Why?”

        “Because I said so. Now, give me the chess set, little sister.”

        Bellatrix’s fear-stricken face contorted to an angry grimace at that word, ‘little’. With a growl, she flung herself off the chest and stomped closer to Checkmate, towering over her with her more developed frame. “It’s not yours. You know why?” She raised her voice. “Because I’m bigger than you! You don’t get to bully me anymore. I’m sick of it! I’m standing up for myself, just like mommy said I should. That chess board is not yours.”

        Checkmate’s expression went flat and frigid. Not out of fear, but out of disappointment. Extorting things from her sister was usually far easier than this. She locked her gaze with her sister’s, knowing full well the sort of effect it had on others, watching as it picked away at her sister’s anger until it withered to uneasiness. Then, she turned to the side and took a few steps deeper into the room.

        She sighed, shaking her head. “I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t know you felt that way about that silly little board and those silly little pieces. But now that I do, I’m starting to see things a bit differently.” She waited for a reply, but none came. “Do you remember our cat, little sister? From three years back?”

        Bellatrix whimpered; eyes began to well with tears.

        “It had a really big belly. Girls get big bellies sometimes, you know. Ponies, kitties, puppies, they all do. I mean, I didn’t know why they did back then. I was just three. I thought maybe they got stuffed with milk, like what comes out of their nipples. You know how much I like milk.” She sighed. “I wanted to know so bad that I took a knife and had a look inside her. I was a bit disappointed when I found out that it neither milk nor honey. It was just some tiny pink hairless kitty that barely moved. It was disgusting. I threw it in the chamber pot. Mommy and daddy tried telling me how bad I hurt the cat. They seemed quite distraught about it, but honestly, I was just confused. I didn’t know why I should care about her pain. It’s not like I’m hurt by it.” She looked back to Bellatrix. “Then again, it might just be because they didn’t have it done to them. So maybe I can come to you while you’re sleeping tonight, and have a look inside you like I did inside that cat. Maybe you can tell me things mommy and daddy couldn’t.” She paused. “Or, you can give me that chess set, and we’ll forget about this whole thing. Is that okay with you, little sister?”

        Bellatrix was struck speechless, with tears welling in her eyes. Checkmate chuckled at the sight of her sister’s trembling legs and quivering lips. ‘She’s such an easy mark,’ she thought. ‘It would almost be a shame if I actually had to do it. Almost.’

        Bellatrix let out a defeated sigh. “Alright. You can have your stupid chess set. Lemme just… just…” She shuffled her way over to the mattress on the opposite end of the room, then buried her face in the pillow and bawled inside it. “Why do I have to have her for a sister? Why can’t I have a nice one like my friends? Why, why, why?”

        Checkmate chuckled again. ‘She still doesn’t know what they say about her behind her back.’

With her sister’s capitulation now certain, Checkmate turned her attention to the chest. With her magic, she flipped open the latch and pulled the cover upwards, revealing a vast assortment of toys and games. Among them were the chess piece, and Bellatrix’s favorite stuffed brown bear. Upon magically lifting up the bear up and out of the chest, she recalled that Bellatrix had named it Fuzzy Head. With a grin on her face, she ripped the head off, listening to the tearing of the seams like it was classical music. In her mind, she remarked that it should be renamed to No-Head, as she threw the two pieces to the wall next to her sister. Then, she took the chess set, and went off on her way.

“I have the set, father.”

Checkmate held the set up in front of Marionette, who sat waiting for her behind a smaller table beside his queen size bed.

“Looks good,” Marionette said. “Put it here and have a seat on the table.”

The chessboard was laid down on the table along with the pieces; the young filly had them in two haphazard piles, the white ones on the left of the board, and the black ones on the right. Then, she leapt up onto the chair and rested her haunches on it, waiting eagerly for her father’s instructions.

With a glow on his horn and a smile on his face, Marionette magically lifted up eight identical pieces from each pile, small cylindrical pieces which narrowed from bottom to top with a spherical bulb at each tip. He laid them horizontally along the chessboard, the white ones along the second-closest row on Checkmate’s side, and the black ones along the second closest row on his own.

“Those are pawns,” Marionette said.

Checkmate looked at her white pieces curiously. “What do they do?”

“Now, hold on there, dear. I have to explain the board to you first.” He cleared his throat. “Every chessboard has sixty-four squares arranged in an eight-by-eight pattern of two colors: black and white. If it’s any different, then it’s not a chessboard.” He dragged a hoof horizontally along his side of the table, just outside the board. “The lines of squares going this way are called ranks. They are labeled by number, from one to eight, in ascending order from the rank closest to the white player to the rank closest to the black player. The white pieces on your side of the board are on the second rank. The black ones on mine are on the seventh rank.” He tapped a hoof on a corner outside the board, then dragged it vertically, towards Checkmate. “The lines of squares that go that way are called files. They are arranged by letter, from ‘a’ on white’s far left, to ‘h’ on white’s far right. You with me so far?”

Checkmate nodded.

“Okay. Those pieces I put down are called pawns. And here’s what they do.” He moved his e7 pawn to e5. “They move up, but not down, their respective files. Now, they usually can only move up one square. But any pawn that hasn’t been moved before in the game can move up two squares. This is really important in the beginning of the game. Speeds up development.”

“Can I do it in the middle or end, father?”

Marionette nodded. “You could. In theory. But you probably won’t be doing it too often since you’ll have more important moves to make by then. You can only move one piece per turn, so every move should count. And there’s the rule of en passant.”

“En passant? What’s that?”

“Here.” He moved his e5 pawn up to e4. “Now, can you be a dear and move your f2 pawn up to f4?”

Checkmate did as she was told. Once she released her magical grip on the pawn, Marionette shifted his e4 pawn diagonally to f3, then lifted Checkmate’s f4 pawn upward and set it to the side of the table, off the board. Checkmate’s smile went flat; she looked quizzically to her father.

“What was that for?”

“A pawn normally captures pieces by moving diagonally, directly on top of them. But when you move a pawn up two spaces, your opponent can move his pawn diagonally behind that pawn and capture it without moving directly on top of it. That is called en passant.”

Checkmate’s smile returned. “Oh, okay!”

He returned the two pawns back to their original spots on f2 and e7. Then, he presented two other pieces from each pile, which were shaped like the archer towers on castles, complete with engravings along their surfaces to simulate brick and mortar, and sturdy ramparts along their upper circumferences. He put the white ones on a1 and h1; the black ones on a8 and h8.

“Those are rooks,” he said. “They can move horizontally or vertically, as far as you like given they don’t have other pieces blocking them. They’re your third most important pieces. You don’t want to lose them.”

Checkmate blinked. “Third most important?”

Marionette nodded. “Yes. After the king and queen.”

“Can I see the king and queen, father?”

Marionette smiled. “Of course you can, dear.”

Checkmate watched four new pieces float up unto the air, her lips opening in an awed smile as she did so. Her gaze followed the two white ones, which landed on the d1 and e1 squares. The piece on the d1 square was tall and curvy, with its tip spiked along its upper circumference, like a crown. Her e1 piece was similar, yet its top was adorned not with a crown, but with a cross, which — as Checkmate recalled — bore resemblance to the wooden structures upon which the land’s worst criminals were bound by nail and rope as punishment for their crimes. That piece’s black counterpart on the other side of the board was adorned with the same cross. It seemed that, whether they were kings or queens, they shared the same morbid sense of humor.

Checkmate pointed to the white piece with the cross. “What’s that?”

“That’s your king. Your most important piece. You lose that, you lose the game.”

“And the other one is the queen?”

Marionette nodded.

“What’s so special about that one?”

“It has the same abilities as the rook, except it also moves diagonally. Very powerful piece.”

“What can the king do?”

“Move one square in any direction.”

Checkmate’s smile went flat. “If he’s weaker than the queen, then why is he the most important piece?”

Marionette knocked on the table with a hoof. “The object of the game is to get the opponent’s king in such a position that absolutely no move can be made without it being in the path of one of your pieces, including no move at all. Such a position is called checkmate.”

The young filly smiled at the sound of her own name.

Marionette continued. “That’s essentially the only way to win. If your opponent believes that he can’t win, and the occurrence of checkmate is only a matter of time, then he can resign, which also means you win. If his king is safe in his square, but there are no moves that can let it remain as such, then he’s in stalemate, which means nobody wins. Now, here’s a very interesting move you can do with your king…”

With his magic, he grasped Checkmate’s king and kingside rook, then switched them along the rank and set them down so that the king sat on the g1 square, and the rook sat on the f1 square.

Checkmate cocked an eyebrow. “But I thought you could only move one piece at a time.”

“That is normally the case, yes. But this is a special move, called ‘castling’, and you can only do it when neither the king nor the rook have moved, when your king is neither directly threatened by an opponent’s piece — that is, put in check, and when it would not directly result in such. Now, in theory, you can do it with either rook, but it’s usually done with the kingside one since the queen isn’t in the way.”

Checkmate’s expression lit up in captivation. “Fascinating.”

With a smile, Marionette nodded, as he returned the rook and king to their proper places. He then put down two more pairs of pieces down on their respective c and f squares. These ones had a more pointed shape about them, with downward cuts into their upper slopes, resembling gaping mouths.

“Those are bishops,” Marionette said. “They move diagonally. You can think of the queen as a rook and a bishop rolled into one. They are, at least in the beginning, of equal value to the last pair of pieces…”

Checkmate looked down to her empty b1 and g1 squares, observing as two new pieces filled them. They took the form of the snarling heads of frightening unicorn stallions who wore the visored stahlhelm, the helmet donned by those cruel and sadistic soldiers whom Checkmate knew from her bedtime stories, which always depicted them decimating opposing forces many times their number and gleefully committing unspeakable atrocities in the name of the Empire and Kaiser to which her home country was subject as a client state. She knew the stories by heart, as her father told them to her and her sister every single night for fear of his negligence being discovered, thus his loyalty to the Empire questioned, thus making him — along with all memory and record of him — possible subject to total annihilation.

“Those are knights,” he said. “They move in L-shapes, like so…”

With his magic, he hovered Checkmate’s kingside knight upward, swinging it around above her kingside bishop and f-pawn before laying it back down on the f3 square.

“One square to the side, two squares forward. And here’s a really special thing about the knight: it is the only piece that can move past other pieces.” He returned Checkmate’s knight to its original square, then shifted his gaze up to her. “Well, those are the basics of chess. Easy to learn, but hard to master. But I’m sure with enough practice, you’ll live up to the name we gave you soon enough.” He chuckled to himself. “Do you want to play a game now?”

Checkmate widened her smile, then nodded her head with ecstatic vigor. “And how about we put a wager on it?”

Marionette had a hearty laugh. “A wager. Alright. Tell me what you want.”

“Hmm…” She put a hoof on her chin. “I want my own personal slave.”

Marionette leaned back in his seat, steeping his forehooves in amusement. “A slave. Alright. What kind of slave to you want? The market has all kinds.”

“I want a big, strong stallion. Loyal, but not stupid. At least, not completely stupid.”

“You sure about that last part? The stupid ones are easier to handle.”

Checkmate nodded. “I’m sure.”

“Hmm…” He laid his hooves down on the table. “Okay. If you can beat me in this game, then I’ll buy you a slave. But he can’t be a real stallion. He has to be a gelding. I’ll have to do a bit more looking around for one that was gelded after puberty, but I want to make sure you and Bellatrix are safe.”

Checkmate giggled. “That’s fine.”

“Okay, then. And if I win, you have to give me half of your allowance for two weeks.”

“Deal.”

“Alright, then.” He tapped the table with his hoof. “White moves first.”

The game had only lasted for twenty-four turns before coming to its final conclusion. Black was left with its center split wide open, as Checkmate could tell right away that the center was the most important spot on the board, thus attacked it without mercy. Most of white’s queenside pieces were left unmoved, as the filly found little use for them, yet the kingside was utterly dominated by a white rook, queen, and knight. The black king stood helplessly on h5, barred from the other files by the white rook on g8 — a traitorous black bishop on the same rank blocked the black rook on a8 from clearing the threat. The white queen stood victoriously on h3, ready to pounce on the woeful black king at a moment’s notice. In h7, a white knight simply watched, aware of the redundancy of his position but also the safety of it. The leader of the black army stared down at the board with glazed eyes and a stupefied gaped smile on his face, undoubtedly bewildered at the reality of his situation: outmaneuvered and outclassed by his own six year old daughter who, not even half an hour before, had never even heard of chess.

The filly looked up to her father on the other side of the table with a smug smile stretched across her face. “Checkmate.”

Marionette released an airy chuckle. “So it is.” He paused, then looked back to his daughter, staring at her silently for a moment. “I’m surprised you didn’t get your mark just now.”

Checkmate simply shrugged.

Marionette sighed. “Well, a deal’s a deal, I guess. I’ll go get you that slave.” He groaned. “It’s gonna be expensive.” He paused, then let out another groan.

“Can you do something else for me, too?”

“What?”

“I want you and all your friends to have a nice, big flagon of wine. On me.”

Marionette cocked an eyebrow. “Out of your allowance?”

Checkmate nodded. “Yes. And I want the guy with the eyepatch to have the biggest one.”

“The guy with the eyepatch… you mean my advisor?”

Checkmate nodded again. “Yes. Get him a really big one. I’m talking Imperial size. And I want you to tell him that I was the one who got it for him, as my way of extending the thorny branch.”

Marionette leaned back in his seat, again steeping his forehooves with interest. “Hm. You know, for a girl, you are really smart. I might even go so far as to call you a prodigy child. Alright. I’ll do as you ask.”

“Thank you, father. Can I have a hug?”

“Aww. Of course you can.”

With a smile drawn sweetly across his face, Marionette lifted himself up from off the seat and walked up to his daughter. Once he was close enough, Checkmate leaned forward and wrapped her forelegs around his neck, expressing love and affection in the rubbing of her cheek on his coat, yet in her heart, feeling nothing. Marionette put his hoof around her back, then after a long moment of exchanging body heat, kissed her on the side of her neck and released her. As he turned and walked away, Checkmate had a devilish chuckle to herself, amused at her own skill in manipulating ponies like chess pieces.

Past the open glass window which stood just underneath Checkmate’s flax-stuffed bed, the orange of the dawn slowly gave way to the blackness of night as the triumphant filly laid underneath her covers, looking down at the open leather bag of loose cotton on the floor. The plushy whiteness within was dotted sparsely with the brown furs of Bellatrix’s ruined stuffed animal. These things were easily extracted, as Bellatrix had cried herself to sleep. Checkmate had a calculated purpose for retrieving this cotton, just as she did for buying the eyepatched stallion an oversized flagon of wine. Marionette probably believed that she did the latter out of a desire to forge an alliance. If he did, then he was mistaken.

Checkmate heard a knock at her door. She lit her horn, dragging the bag to a dark corner of the room just before the knob on the door twisted, and the door opened. Coming into her room was her father, accompanied by a massive earth pony whose muscles were like boulders underneath his weather-beaten hide and gray coat covered in dust. The mark on his flank, a simple hunk of black quartz, was obscured by a burn scar in the shape of a square with an X inside it. Marionette stepped aside, then looked to his daughter to speak.

“Here is your slave. A trained cart-puller, gelded well past puberty and so obedient that he’d jump into a nest of scorpions on his master’s merest whim. His name is Gneiss Toufault.”

        At the sight of her new piece of property, Checkmate lifted her covers up from off her bed and threw them aside before rolling off the bed and standing up on the floor. She looked up at Gneiss, into his black eyes. He looked back into hers, and smiled at her. Checkmate put on her trusty fake smile and embraced Gneiss with her forelegs.

        “He’s wonderful,” she said. “I love him.”

        “That’s good to know,” Marionette said with a nod.

        “I’m curious. What’s the guy with the eyepatch doing?”

        Marionette pointed out the open bedroom door behind him. “He’s out back taking a leak. It’s a big one. Must’ve been all that wine you gave him.”

        Checkmate thought, ‘Perfect,’ but she said, “Alright. Is it okay if I talk to Gneiss alone for a while?”

        Marionette turned towards the door, then walked out to the other side, shutting the door behind him. Things were going great so far.

        Checkmate magically grabbed a clump of the cotton from the bag in the corner of the room, letting her smile go flat and giving a stern look to Gneiss as she did so. “Okay. We don’t have a whole lot of time before old one-eye comes back out.” She dumped some cotton on his back; he didn’t seem to notice or care. “I have no use for a cart-puller. There’s something else I want you to do.”

        Gneiss blinked; his smile dissipated. “Hm? And what’s that?”

        “I want you put one-eye in the ground. Do that, and I set you free. Don’t, and I have daddy make sure you have to wear two eyepatches. Is that a deal?”

        “F-… free?”

        Checkmate nodded. “Yes. Free. As in, no longer a slave.”

        “But…” he sighed. “But I never done that to a pony before.”

        Checkmate took another clump of cotton from the bag, then dumped it on Gneiss’ head. “Yes, there’s a first time for everything, isn’t there? Now, no more time. Deal or no deal?”

        Gneiss sighed, then nodded his head. “Alright. Deal.”

        “Good. Now, I will open the door. You will charge out back and do the deed. I will beg and scream for you not to do it, but you will do it anyway, then you will run away like you’ve never run before. If you don’t, they’ll catch you. You don’t want them to catch you, and if they do, I won’t save you.” She magically twisted the doorknob and swung the door open. “Go.”

        Gneiss gave Checkmate a knowing nod, then whipped himself around and charged out the door, hollering at the top of his lungs all the while. Checkmate waited silently for a brief moment before putting on her best expression of distress and galloping out the room, following his path, making sure to grab the cotton left over on the floor with magical grip.

        “No!” she cried out. She tossed the cotton down the hall, so that it landed roughly along a trail leading to Bellatrix’s room. “Please, no! Stop!”

        She stopped at the end of the hallway, where she could hear the anguished screams of the eyepatched stallion echoing from the other side of the house, then the shouting of the five other stallions who had left the living room in pursuit of the slave. After a quick once-over of the room, she continued her gallop, but was cut short by her father running in front of her from around a corner and blocking her path.

        “You don’t want to go there,” Marionette said worriedly. “The slave’s gone mad. He’s hurt my advisor real bad.”

Checkmate gasped, widening her eyes in a feigned look of surprise.

“By the gods,” shouted one of the stallions from out back, “he’s dead! It’s a real mess over here, boss. The slave’ll go on the cross for what he did, I’ll make sure of it!”

Marionette looked behind him and shouted, “You guys make good sure of it.” He looked back to Checkmate. “What happened, anyway?”

Checkmate looked down to the ground and sighed. “I told him I was going to set him free. Then he went crazy.” She looked up to her father. “First, he ruined Bellatrix’s stuffed animal, then he went that way screaming like a wild mare!”

Marionette blinked. Then, he raised a hoof and gave his daughter a pat on the head. “There, there, dear. You know, most slaves are born into it, so they don’t actually know what freedom is. They usually want freedom, but a rare few of them find it deeply, deeply scary.” He sighed. “Gneiss must’ve been one of those. I don’t know if you were kidding or not, but either way, it’s not entirely impossible that being offered freedom made him snap.” He paused, then sighed again. “You have such a good heart. The slave will have to be put down, though. I spent a lot of money on him. I can’t replace him for you.”

Checkmate nodded, looking down on the ground. “It’s okay. I understand. You don’t have to replace him.”

“Alright. You go get some sleep, okay? It’s almost bedtime.”

Checkmate looked back up to her father with a warm smile. “Thank you, father. I love you.”

“I love you too, sweetheart.”

After receiving her father’s goodnight kiss on her forehead, Checkmate turned around and walked back down the hallway, hearing the struggles of the slave and the stallions who apprehended him. Once she entered her room, she shut her door and looked to the bag in the corner. It was virtually free of cotton, and the remnant fluff that littered her floor was highly scant and scarce. She lit her horn, taking the little that remained and throwing it out the open window, watching as the nighttime breeze carried it off to nowhere. A malevolent smirk stretched across her face as she shut the window. ‘Nobody talks that way about Checkmate Master and gets away with it for long,’ she thought to herself.

Following that thought was first a warm tingle on both her flanks, then two bright flashes. The light and warmth departed as quickly as they came, and left behind marks that were permanently grafted to her coat. They each bore the image of a white pawn lying flat on its side as a black queen stood menacingly over it. With that, it was now clear to Checkmate where her talents lied. Not that she hadn’t known of this talent before — indeed, she had already used it quite often — but what she had just done was something she could proudly declare to be the magnum opus of her early childhood. And for that, she welcomed the arrival of her mark. And she would sleep soundly tonight, with full certainty that, in the dog-eat-dog world in which she was born, she was destined for greatness.