A Game of Chess.

A Game of Chess. Rising and Foreshadowing Conflict. Climax.

I've studied the chess table and its consequent game. I know every inch of every square and what each can provide without doubt. I have seen the creatures of this world conflicting in their natural habitat, like an audience to a drama, watching them devour each other until the math proves the premise on a single side. I've moved according to their stride, like a dancer's partner, gliding across this checkered ballroom floor until the truth sets in stone. It's simple dialectics, a move is made and then, from the other, another follows. White conflicts with Black and Black counteracts, a perfect unity of opposites. Never jumping ahead of themselves, one piece at a time, it's a rising exposition from White's first movement forward, a heat creeping in increments on the desert surface. They're each a step ahead at every moment, each a worthy opponent for the other. The cold, morning mirage becomes blistering afternoon and only once does the volcano erupt from boiling sand, truly agape in a fiery victory. Do you hear that power in the distance?

A horn bellows and I move in the wake of the Divine Voice. I am but a cleric for his queen, yet the king requests my service in these grave times. This foreboding feeling leaves me truly afraid for my life, however, like a snowy dove's feather, I am called to the wind with my brethren towards the direction of the evil swamps. God has blessed our devout; the witchcraft of the Black Kingdom will surely fall to His mystic weaponry.

A farmer's strong-hand makes no strongman in the abysmal depths of this marsh. Tilling the land for fallen comrades, the breath of the Black Eye leaves me entrenched in a dripping terror, coating my lungs in a bitter molasses. I contain my sultry pearl of abandonment in the Clam of Defeat, knowing the king's life to be the insurmountable jewel I must truly protect. The following torture would be an endless excruciation heard from every corner of the world.

From afar this looking tower I notice an encounter of mild defeat. A white knight on horseback casts his sword into the chest of a young peon boy standing guard for the King as he leaves the gates of the Black majesty. The boy cries out and the embers from the magical weapon envelope him in ash. The king needn't make haste, after all, the armored fool is frozen in awe, staring at the remains of his powerful encounter with the child. The half daemon looks to and fro as he skims across the moated bridge. He grabs for the golden kryss at his waste and slowly stabs between the break in white armor, freezing it solid. The blood runs quick on the fallen honor.

She's traveled far from her black caging, ripping down from the sky like a dragon. The wind blows a bastion out of the sand in my protection, but she ignites it with her icy breath, stagnating all those inside, moving ever closer to my advantage. My last warring cleric triangulates a teleportation to the town square, fighting a harrowing defeat that lends her to me. His bravery leaves her chained in physical combat with a half deity, however, she smirks as if the war is already won. I tighten my gauntlets for battle as the flying arrow passes my helmet. Oh my great men of war, your weight is on the wrong side of the world. Now it spins out of control. Eclipsed in madness, I send the eruption beneath her, encircling her in rising doom. She cannot escape her molten grave, neither does the arrow shaft merely graze my heart. Everything is hazy. Everything is dark. It is late in the hour, hearing the Devil's whisper say:

“Checkmate.”