“Mmmmfnnngh… Durandal?!” a voice growled across the cavern. “What’s keeping you?! Are we having a game or aren’t we?!”
“Silence your whining, Polyph,” the Slithering’s voice echoed back over Rainbow Dash’s head. The pegasus snuck her way towards a rising mound of crumpled cloudstone and debris as her ears twitched to the booming exchange above her. “Do you want a complete board or not?”
“I’ve wanted one ever since I arrived here hours ago! But you seem to be taking your sweet time!”
“You know how this works, Polyph. Either we play with real figures or we don’t play at all.”
“It’s your fault that I keep winning them off your scales, Durandal. At this rate, I’m gonna buy you out of lair and home!”
“My tail, you will! This time, I have the sharpest edge!”
“You big blunt worm! Show me!”
Rainbow Dash scampered up a steep incline of concrete. She dangled the lantern from her tail as she clung to the wall like a squirrel beneath a billowing brazier. With squinting ruby eyes, she looked across the center of the large chamber.
There stood a large table formed out of many-many stones stacked up on top of one another. Slathered across the top was a slab of granite--perfectly square--and covered with sixty-four squares, alternating black and white. Positioned within sixteen of the squares in solid lines on one side of the board were life-sized figures, all buffalo. The reason they were life-sized was because they were alive, or at least they once were. The frozen, petrified creatures stood at the ready, facing each other across the oversized chess board.
Rainbow jerked--surprised--as the basilisk climbed up to one end of the table. With the front pair of his many limbs, he slapped down the female buffalo figure with the rod of stone stuck to her forehead.
“Look what I found! Just in time for your visit, Polyph!” The basilisk winked his one eye and grinned toothily at his latest offering. “A unicorn! Straight from the fields of Equestria!”
Rainbow Dash grimaced. The whole cave shook from a series of thudding footsteps. She nearly slipped from her perch and had to flap her wings to keep from plummeting.
“Hah! You’re a stupid snake, Durandal!” A large, thick-limbed biped shuffled over, heaving an enormous sack over his shoulder. He had a hairy back, iron-thick pale skin, and a moldy loin-cloth hanging over his abdomen. A single blue eye blinked in the center of his skull, and a grimy horn stuck out the top of his skull, laced with frost and condensation. “You think having unicorns is gonna give your bishops any better of a chance? Hrmmff… might as well sell me all of your meat and kiss your lair goodbye!”
“Those aren’t the terms we agreed to, you oaf.”
“Yeah, yeah…” The cyclops sat down with a thud. He dropped his satchel behind him and cracked his neck joints. “Lemme see your other unicorn.”
“Hmmm?”
“Well, you got bishops for this game or don’tcha?!” Polyph pointed a gnarled finger at the empty spot of the chessboard on the basilisk’s side. “Let’s see it!”
“I’ve got your other unicorn right here!” That said, the Slithering slid a very familiar mountain ram into place, its frozen stones glistening in the pale torchlight.
Rainbow Dash winced.
“Haaah!” The cyclops drooled between laughing outbursts. “You call that a unicorn?!”
“Damn straight, you frozen fool.”
“Why does he have two horns on edges of his head?”
“Cuz he’s a guy unicorn!”
“Hraaaugh! How does that even work?!”
“Sexual dimorphism! Look it up!”
“Grrrr… Polyph doesn’t read!”
“And that’s why I keep beating you…” The Basilisk curled up like a basketed cobra and smirked from across the board. “Are you going to show your pieces or what?”
“Mmmmmph… yes, yes… be patient, ya squirmy bastard.” Polyph pulled a smaller pouch from his large sack. It was still large enough to envelope a tiny Ponyvillean house. This didn’t stop him from unraveling the leathery thing like a deflated balloon and inordinately dumping out a rattling cluster of frozen figures. Fused in thick ice, several real griffons, pegasi, and wyverns slid to a stop across his end of the chessboard. “It took me forever to lure them into my lair so I could capture ‘em!”
“So that’s why I had to wait so long for your smelly hide.”
“Shush…” Polyph set the helpless creatures up one by one in their squares. “Hmmm… I sure hope none of my pawns broke on the way over.”
As if on cue, one of the griffons stirred, its head and beak having thawed out. The creature’s avian head opened an eye, then let loose a horrified shriek.
“Hah!” Durandal grunted. “Nice job there, slick!”
“Oh, for the love of Tartarus…” The cyclops leaned in, opened his mouth wide, and breathed a vaporous wave of frigid air all over the creature.
Rainbow Dash watched, wide-eyed.
The griffon stirred, twitched, and went still, its head covered once more with paralyzing frost.
“Hmmph… darn things poke like a mother when they wake up in mid-hike.” The cyclops blinked dumbly at Durandal’s side of the table. “I sure wish I knew how you find your pegasi so easily.”
Rainbow’s eyes followed the cyclops’ gesture. She did a double-take at a pair of buffalo that had stone “wings” glued to their hides with basilisk mucus.
“Ohhhhh… that’s a trade secret, Polyph.” The basilisk grinned with a reptilian hiss. “You ready to lose?”
Quietly, with the grace of a skulking cat, Rainbow Dash snuck closer to the hellish chess game.