Losing a game teaches you more about your opponent than winning one.
She carefully placed the board and its pieces on the kitchen table, breaking the pattern of the frozen game for the first time in many years. The set was exquisite; the board's surface smooth and shiny, the pieces carved with great detail, from palest alabaster and shiny obsidian. As he sat down across the table from her she began arranging the pawns in their ancient patterns. It had been a long time since she played with this set, it felt good to see the old frozen game started over; a new beginning.
"Black or white..?" she asked, holding up both kings in her hands. He gave her a little self-ironical smile.
"Doesn't matter. I'm a terrible player."
She shrugged and handed him the black king. It just seemed to fit.
Only a few moves into the game she reached the conclusion that his modesty had not been an understatement. His moves seemed incoherent and crude; he walked into the most transparent of traps and lost pawn after pawn. After surprisingly few moves there were only a handful of black pieces left on the board, mercilessly surrounded by her white ones, an almost ridiculously simple kill. She frowned as she picked the last black rook from the board.
"Are you really this bad, or are you letting me win on purpose?" she asked. He smiled ruefully and made yet another perfectly irrational move.
"It's a natural talent, I'm afraid. I'm really not good at any game that demands concentration and planning ahead. Eris refused to let me near a chessboard after my first miserable attempt at playing."
She plucked yet another black piece from the board, in the same move placing her bishop in a position ready to strike at the black king.
"But if you don't practice you never get better, either."
He sighed and moved the king out of the way, knowing just as well as she did she would have him cornered with her next move.
"Practice didn't have anything to do with it. Rezo was a mastermind at chess. Of course. In her opinion I ought to have been as well, but I wasn't. Eris was very upset over all those little glitches that proved once and for all I was not really him, so she chose to keep me away from the situations that betrayed them."
Sylphiel bit her lip and pondered that as she absently moved her bishop to spring the last trap, neatly ending the game. He tipped the black king over with a resigned smile.
"You win."
"Another game..?"
He shrugged and handed her back the one white piece he had managed to bring down.
"Why not? At least now you know what you're up against."
She couldn't help but smile a little at that as she arranged the pieces into line again, this time picking the black ones for herself. The second game began about as pitifully as the last.
"That was a downright stupid move," she stated as he let his queen walk straight into a trap not even fully set yet. There was no challenge in winning that easily.
"I just realized that, yes," he conceded, retreating with a knight.
"It's almost like real life in that way. You know you will never realize a mistake until it's too late, yet you have to make a move."
She looked up, searching his face for a deeper meaning behind those words, but his attention was concentrated on the game. Distracted she moved a bishop without really thinking only to have it neatly slain by his charging knight. She raised an eyebrow and studied the board closer.
"Progress."
He gave her a grin that could have been considered downright evil if it hadn't been for the gleam of self-contempt in his eyes. Proceeding with greater care than before she managed to strip the board of white pieces without losing more than a handful of her own. Once again he ended up with his king entrapped by her army of pieces.
"You win again," he sighed and surrendered the king to her.
"At least it wasn't quite as easy this time. Another game? Best out of three..?"
"You have already won two games," he acidly pointed out, but started to arrange the pieces for a third game. She actually smiled a little at that, apparently enjoying herself.
As the third battle begun he studied the board with greater concentration than before. The game slowly started to make sense; he could predict a few of her moves and see where her plans were headed. Thinking forward had never been his strong point, but the orderly defined game, with its almost mathematical purity, helped him spot the possible near futures unraveling before him, constantly changing according to the present situation. Fascinating.
This time she had to fight hard to win, only a small elite of pieces remaining on both sides, fighting a merciless battle to the bitter end. Knocking down the king in surrender wasn't nearly as bitter a defeat this time, rather an act of respect for a cunning enemy.
"You learn fast," she commented as she sat back and watched the board after the last intense showdown. He studied her face, trying to trace any irony in her voice, but couldn't find any. Interesting. That would be what was called a compliment. Who would have thought it?
She leaned back, her fingers absently playing with the fallen king. To her surprise she realized she was actually enjoying herself. It had been a long time since she had had company, being able to play games like this. On the chessboard, with its properly defined rules and moves, she could almost forget who her opponent was, just play the game. Didn't someone once say chess was a language in its own, a way for the most different of people to meet in understanding? She couldn't quite remember how the saying went, but there was truth in it. Few things would teach you as much about an enemy as playing a game of chess with him. And unless this particular enemy's earlier ineptitude with the pieces had been an act to lure her into carelessness, he was improving his skills frighteningly fast.
She could see him watching her across the board, waiting for her to metaphorically make a move. He had been right in that respect; life could be considered a game of chess, a game where you couldn't see the board, nor your opponent's pieces. A game where you barely grasped the rules and could only hope fate was not about to turn the board on you.
"One more game..?"
"Certainly."
As the fourth game began, both moved much more cautiously than before, having determined the other's strengths and weaknesses. As if the previous games had only been for practice, this was suddenly deadly serious. She quickly discovered he was not about to be as easily defeated as before; quickly spotting her traps and turning them back on herself he played with ruthless concentration. She answered by planning her moves even further ahead, creating dead ends and decoy traps along the way. His moves were still perfectly incomprehensible, but unlike before they now had a hidden purpose, making them much more dangerous. She frowned as he caught her queen in a particularly elaborated trap, scolding herself for having grown careless, then took great pleasure in springing a trap of her own to eliminate a knight, rook and bishop before he had a chance to protect them. Although in the small-scale form of an innocent game a bloody war raged across the board, both players as determined not to lose. Having found out talking distracted him, she unrelentingly used it as part of her strategy, to conceal important moves in a veil of small talk.
"I used to play quite a lot with Zelgadis when I was travelling with Lina and the others. He's a good player."
He knew just what she was playing at with her conversational comments, and she knew he knew. The game went beyond the board, becoming indeed an intricate combat between two minds.
"The chimera? Yes, he would be. Rezo taught him to play."
He scowled in irritation as he walked into one of her confounded traps and lost his other knight in the process. Pinching one of her knights in return felt a bit petty, but revenge was still sweet.
"Really? He never told me that. How did you know?"
Having him distracted by a nasty massacre of pieces over at her half of the board she managed to sneak a pawn behind his defenses, thus reviving her queen. A look at his face told her he was not pleased at all.
"I would know. I share some of Rezo's memories, after all."
Tricking him like that would cost her, he vowed, taking out his frustration on her bishops.
"Then how come you claim to be such a poor player? Shouldn't you remember how to play as well..?"
That was playing dirty, she knew, but she was determined not to lose. He gave her a haughty glare.
"That's what Eris said. Obviously it doesn't work that way. However, you may have had a point. Practice does improve skill, doesn't it?"
And with that he closed the trap around her pawns, ensuring himself she wouldn't be able to get any more important pieces back once they were gone, as well as moving in for a sure kill on the king. She gave him an angry glare, mustering the pieces she had left to launch an attack to take out his pieces in return. As the war raged on, more and more pieces left the board to stand as silent witnesses to the battle, lined up along the edge of the table. Finally only the two kings, flanked by a bishop and a rook remained. Then the battle grew truly ferocious. Both trying to trick the other into the most unlikely of traps and at the same time avoid the other's attacks, the last phase of the game seemed to last forever, the four pieces chasing each other back and forth across the board.
Then, somehow, she wasn't quite sure how, he managed to beguile her into forgetting about his king, thus using it to take out her rook, leaving her with only her king left on the board. Through a few more moves his king had forced her into a corner, rendering her helpless before his bishop's attack.
"Check mate."
And he smiled.
The quotes are from Oshiro-sama's Letters to a Red Priest (in other words, I made 'em up) and can't be used without my permission. If you ask nicely and give me credit you'll most likely get my permission, but anyways...
Who to thank this time..? Oh! I know! All the people actually taking a minute or two to write me emails about this story. Write me, and you'll be included in that category, too! Isn't that nice?
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