I’m the King but it’s Chess.

But I didn’t want to experience a multiverse, I wanted to retreat to one universe and retire and be quiet and peaceful.

When you want for nothing, what more can you desire? I asked her.

The mirrors that hung in the open night air surrounding the tower each had projected upon them a moving image of a far away universe.

One or two I recognized.

Perhaps I had primed the Queen to render these by suggesting false images the other day.

But they were so detailed…

And she couldn’t know…

That was a man opening an engine crank case and replacing rockers.

That was some sort of vessel on a video feed before celestial orbs.

That was armed spacemen playing cards with a little skink and a robot.

That was some Tolkien like cozy shire…

That one looked like a version of Narnia, truffle tree, gentle lion and Victorians escaping the collapse of their empire...

“Why do we not take a look and see? If one is never permitted in public one man may never know what they may fancy.” Dove of paradise suggested.

I didn’t need other people to tell me what I fancy, I fancy… grabbing and attacking and squeezing and crushing and ripping and tearing.

Punching in biting and chewing and twisting and cutting and swinging

I didn’t really need to go anywhere to do any of those things to anything that I found. I was king, but it was never proper to indulge in my desires.

In fact, going into public to do all of those things was a disaster generally waiting to happen

In all honesty it was a mercy that the world I had been born into had video games for by way of video games. All of these emotions and desires could be satiated without the negative externalities.

“Darling of many paradises I want for nothing but the satisfaction to destroy with my own two hands.”

“Oh my simple lion, you want to complex and delicate world then”

But I already lived in one, I could play at the games of kings my entire life.

“I am a sleepy old lion, to eat drink and be merry is what little I desire.”

“Oh have some ambitions!” My queen prodded me with her gentle touch. Only a moment later she flourished and her staff appeared in their hand before an auditory tap of it’s base dampened in the cool humid air. In response the orb flickered more violently.

“We hold here in our vision peaceful worlds, they are ripe for destruction, conquest.”

A man repaired a stopwatch.

Narrow and spindly formula one flying cars cycled over a slalom.

A beautiful woman returned a bird to a bizarre looking birdhouse.

“Aside from a sense of satisfaction, what are they worth to us? We are already supreme in this world if you ignore our world.” I glanced across the mirrors, some in 2D some in three, some in four. I was fascinated to look at the worlds anyway.

Was that Pinkie Pie?

They will say I lost my mind pinkie baby cutie sugar pie but you found it for me.

Applejack was a more responsible pony anyway.

My queen has no idea my disorders. I have done things, I have seen things I was once not proud of.

Age cures all shame. To think we could conquer Equestria!

“But are we supreme over everything?” The queen responded, tearing me back to reality.

Though that mirror was a reality.

Peaceful world indeed.

Horse power is good for any nation, and it is more accurately titled pony power.

“Are we supposed to be?” I wished for a chair or a pillar to lean on.

Fortunately there was a sturdy wooden pillar to lean on.

The queen, my queen, glared at me “Whom do you ask for permission? For if you meet them on the road I urge you kill them. They do not care for your best interests, for I know that you may be king of more.”

“Maybe but is it not better to be content with the hands dealt us?”

“You are king and your whims make the hands coarse or soft as you desire! I come to you with the fruits of victory and conquest in hand and you deny them! Shall you let them rot as you age? Shall you disappoint the people of our kingdom with a soft, naive and banal reign? Call them to do something better and they shall! And I must admit the soft realms appear attractive, risk is low, adventures sleepy, peaceful, there are much worse worlds and should they desire they may pluck our own middling realm as a monkey plucks a peach.”

“Such is always true, life is fragile” I agreed.

“Is not the best insurance that of the sovereign?” The Dove pleaded.

“Perhaps those insiders who observe the sovereign have a better view.” I am nothing if not paranoid

“Pish and posh you know what I say, we are held in thy hands O lion. Paranoia may be entertaining but tis paralyzing.”

Easy for a magical girl to say, she was part of the treasury. Gold wasn’t picky about who held it.

Which brought my other question to the front.

“O Dove what if we only destroyed what we touch?”

“It is the nature of life. We should enjoy it.” Her eyes glanced at a spaceship in another universe that had rendered a laser powerful enough to split a celestial object.”

“You misunderstand, what if our duty was to expedite the process, and finally silence the infinite void of all life?”

She blinked a few times as if caught unawares and looked at me.

“O lion please no! Why would you consider such evil!?”

“My hatred of parasites is such that I struggle greatly to love life. In my spite I recognize that in a fire, none may live.

Sometimes you say something you didn’t expect to affect you strongly. But gosh does it feel good to feel something.

Pinkie Pie may be innocent, but she was married to a man I could not trust.

A Pony… pardon me.

That was cannon, and the fact that it was true in one universe ruined for me the ones where it was not.

“I do not trust myself in conquest my queen, If I do not destroy myself I shall surely destroy it all.”

“Then you are no king.”

“Which is why I am moving you, you won’t wheedle your way out of it. I order my queen on B two, to B four, you capture a knight and are protected by black’s pawn blocking their queen. you know the orders.”

I wondered if this would work or if I would have to scramble to ever touch the chessboard again.

The queen’s face became a picture of fear. For an instant I worried I had destroyed her. “To hear is to obey” she sobbed gently.

I don’t make people cry often but it always feels good.

I do like seeing my wife breathe heavily. Even if it’s a confused rage that drives it.

I wish I didn’t have to hurt her, but it’s the only way to keep up with her insatiable energy. In the modern world we never would have met. And if we did… well, I would have quit and pretended she didn’t exist.

Fearing conquest as I do.

Perhaps she would ghost me if I asked for her number in the last decade. Blah blah blah leagues and all that jazz, I understand my hairline and body are “higher level” in this world, but beauty and nobility is a trick for fools.

Beauty hamstrung me in my past life, I won’t let it happen again.

Sad but true. But have you met her? I pity he who doesn’t have the authority of a chessboard.

You say you like my queen for her beauty but you like her for her dominance, the strongest mating signal, deny it all you want, appeal to nobility and manners.

But I know you are an insect.

If I ever find my way back to your dimension I won’t waste time invading.

I know you rats, I can play fast and loose in this world because it’s human. If I lose I won’t be mad. But back in yours :(

Back in yours I should never play chess, better a computer. You don’t deserve a human opponent. You would only crucify them.

There is no freedom as long as you live. We can all breathe slow when the fiend’s exposed.

“Forgive me my king that I do not depart this instant, I… I… fear I am not dressed for war!” The Dove blubbered

I approached her and put and hand around her.

“Don’t be scared, you are the most valuable piece, without you I am unlikely to win much at all.”

She didn’t have a response and simply hugged me trying and failing not to cry.

Even here I did not trust her. Maybe that’s wrong.

“I want to tell you of a dream I have once seen in another world far from here, let it not be said this is not my first time seeing worlds myriad.”

“Before I go?”

“Yes I hope the horrible truth isn’t too much.”

“What is it?” She was eager to know.

I pointed to the mirrors.

“In some minority of those worlds it is said to be, that visitors may come, but never leave. For among worlds is more than one, where every visitor becomes a king. On tiny thrones as graves they must sit, in pleasure dream or death. Nevermore any song will they ever sing. Their minds devoid of wit.”

The queen thought about it for a moment.

“Say it again.” She urged ear to my chest. I wanted to put my ear to my chest.

Something was satisfying about hearing the reverberation of something directly from the source.

Uh oh… dreams are so hard to remember.

“Where every visitor becomes a king, on tiny thrones as graves they in pleasure dream or death must sit. Nevermore any song will they ever sing. Their minds devoid of wit.”

Devoid was a good word but was robbed better? I am not a poet, syllable placement and rhythm often escape me.

But the dreaded rhymes do not leave my mind. By simple language I am broken for all time.

“Who told you that story?”

“That’s a good question, I don’t know.”

I didn’t know. But it had been a dream of mine, a subject of stories I had once read. Perhaps the earliest invocation I had known was the lotus eater’s of Greek mythology.

“Tis a story told to scar your mind I fear. We may be caught in a larger web than our petty mundane war.”

She hugged me tight, and hurried off down the stairs, on her own two legs, despite her staff and habit of teleporting around.