by Pirateaba
“I—lost. Three games in a row. I couldn’t even put up a fight.”
Erin stared curiously at the chessboard as Olesm cringed. He couldn’t even bear to see how badly he’d been demolished. It hadn’t even been a battle, really. Just the other player pushing Olesm’s head down into the waters and holding him there while he drowned.
“Huh. That other guy’s good. Or girl. Probably a guy, though.”
“You can tell what gender he is just by looking at the board?”
Olesm’s tail drooped ever further. Erin was so far above him—
“No! I just mean—well, all the Grandmasters back home were mostly guys. Girls didn’t play chess as much so I meant…hm.”
She stared at the board, and then started resetting the pieces. Olesm stared glumly at the board.
“I think I made him mad. Or—disappointed him. I’m so sorry.”
After the first game, the other play had reset the board quickly. But this time he – or she – let Erin put all the pieces back. Yes, Olesm could feel the disapproval radiating off the pieces. It scourged him, and he couldn’t deny it. If he had found out that the player who’d come up with that marvelous puzzle was just someone on Olesm’s level.
Olesm lowered his head to the table. He would apologize, leave the inn, go to the city, and not bother Erin again until he was ten levels higher. He would—
A hand brushed the spines on Olesm’s head and he jerked. Erin patted him gently on the head as she took a seat at the table.
“There’s no reason to be mad for playing someone worse than you are. Everyone has to learn. If this guy’s mad, I’ll teach him a lesson for you.”
Erin flipped the board around, and moved a white pawn. Olesm hesitated, but his pulse suddenly began to speed up.
“He’s quite good.”
“I know. I could see. So—I guess I’ll take this seriously.”
“I’ll just—I’ll give you some—”
Olesm backed up until he was a table’s length away from Erin. He waited, with baited breath as she stared at the board. Then, almost reluctantly, he saw a knight move to F6. His spirits sank again.
This was…what had Erin called it? Oh, yes. Alekhine’s Defence. It was an aggressive opening to counter the King’s Pawn with, and it hinted that the other player had grown tired of playing Olesm. At first he’d played very cautiously, but now—
Erin smiled. She moved another piece forwards—a knight to C3. Almost instantly, the other player countered, moving his knight again, but Erin didn’t stop. She started playing pieces rapidly, as soon as the other player moved his.
Olesm could feel the shock running through the board. The other player had probably just realized someone else was playing—Olesm hadn’t moved his pieces so quickly, and certainly not with such skill.
For five whole minutes, the game paused, and Olesm could feel the other side recalculating. When the game resumed, it was slower, and the other player took his time thinking his moves over.
“Oh.”
It was a soft sound, in the gentle silence of the inn. It came from Erin as the game was more than halfway done. She’d made a mistake, and the other player had taken her queen. Olesm stared at the board in shock, and then at Erin. She was surprised, but she just looked at the board and started recalculating her position. He heard her murmur as she tapped her chin.
“He’s quite good. Yeah.”
And then—
She grinned. It was an expression like many of the bright smiles Olesm had seen and felt before, but this one was different. It made his scales tingle.
Because there was a light in Erin’s eyes he hadn’t seen before. And as she moved the next piece, punishing the bishop that had stolen her queen, he thought she looked…
Hungry. Yes, that was it.
Whatever else you might say of Erin, her skill at chess was indisputable. In this world, chess had lived in the minds of a few players for less than three years. But Erin had grown up playing chess as a child. She had breathed and lived the game, playing more matches in a year than Olesm had in his life.
Erin had grown up studying over a 1,500 years of chess. She’d learned from Grandmasters and countless games she could look back on. Chess strategy had evolved much since the origin of the game, and Erin had learned to play to such a level that even among the 600 million players in the world, she still stood close to the top.
To Olesm, she was a god of chess that had come to this world. He had never beaten Erin; never even come close. But it is lonely, standing alone at the top. Only once he’d seen Erin challenged—only once had he ever seen her lose.
She’d played a hundred Workers at once and then taught them an Immortal Game. And then she had played one of her own. Olesm still remembered that game.
It must have been so lonely, afterwards. To play against players who couldn’t even make her take the game seriously. But now. But now—
Erin played silently, sitting with her back straight against the chair, posture perfect. She didn’t look around, didn’t chatter happily as she played. For once, she was concentrating completely on the game. And as the game drew close to its ending, her responses got faster, her concentration even deeper.
At the end, Erin took the black King, and Olesm remembered to breathe again. Erin sat back in her chair and laughed in delight. And that sound was pure and made him realize that she was happy.
Happy to have won. But happier to have played.
“Come on. Another game?”
Erin started resetting the board, but she tapped one of the ghostly pawns on the chess board once. And Olesm saw the black pawn move up and gently tap the board as well.
They understood each other. They were two players separated by hundreds, possibly thousands of miles, but they understood each other. They were here to play. So they did.
Another game. And another. Erin won both. Olesm watched as the fourth game began, and realized the truth.
Yes. Whoever was on the other side of the chess board was not Erin’s equal. But they were close. So close. And in each game, they sent a message to Erin, one written in every closely-contested exchange, every lost pawn and checkmate.
You are not alone.
Olesm wiped tears from his eyes. His heart ached, and he knew it would be silly to anyone watching. But there was a beauty in this that only someone who loved the game could see.
It took so much to look away, but he had to. Olesm walked into the kitchen and found what he was looking for. He’d found a bunch of parchment Erin had bought when he was helping out. It was still there, in a cupboard with an ink pot and quill.
Olesm returned to the living room and stared at the game. It was going slowly, and he looked at Erin’s face just for a second. She was closing her eyes, smiling gently, and his heart hurt for a moment.
He slowly picked up a quill and dipped it into the ink. Olesm began to write, noting down each move in the shorthand notation Erin had taught him.
And Erin smiled, and the chess pieces moved. They danced on the board and the Drake listened to history being made.
—-
Far away, and in a large tent on the middle of a hot and humid day, Niers Astoragon, second in command of one of the Four Great Companies of Baleros, and highest-leveled [Strategist] on the continent, gently pushed over the king and stared at the chess board.
He ignored the sounds of battle around him. His soldiers would emerge triumphant, and his lieutenants had the battle well in hand. Interfering with them would only impede their growth.
No, instead, he stared at the shimmering board and the magical pieces arranged on it. He had lost. For the fourth time. It had been close—ever so close! But he had lost. For the fourth time.
Niers did not rage. He was not, in fact, angry. Instead, he smiled, in much the same way Erin had. He put one hand on his chin and stroked it, feeling stubble rasp under his fingers. He had forgotten to shave, or sleep for that matter. He had been waiting to play the puzzle-maker and after an
initial disappointment, his patience had been rewarded tenfold.
For a second, Niers debated hunting for his razor. He would have borrowed one of his lieutenant’s blades, but he hated how they fussed over him. A dagger as large as he was was still a dagger, and he was more than strong enough to lift it. It was just awkward, that was all.
Appearance trumped desire. Niers was a Level 63 [Tactician], and on his shoulders the fate of his company rested. He could not let his soldiers down. But—perhaps after he had played another game?
Niers reached down for a chess piece, and then he paused. A sound was coming from outside—a dissonance in the sounds of battle. Niers listened, and sighed. Some fool had just deployed the other army’s elite vanguard against his soldiers, turning this skirmish into a far bloodier battle.
His soldiers would need his help. Niers raised a hand and said two words.
“[Assault Formation].”
The air on the battlefield changed. Satisfied, Niers turned back to the board, ignoring the roar that came from his soldiers as the tide shifted once more.
He looked back at the board. He had sent it on a whim, judging the cost worth the possibility of a decent game. But now a bigger question loomed in his mind, one he’d wished he had asked sooner.
“Who are you?”
The chess pieces didn’t answer out loud. But as Niers saw the white side reset itself, he knew he would find part of the answer in the game. He sat down, concentrated harder than he had for what seemed like years—
And began to play.
2.01 G
The King of Goblins rode through burning fields and across battlefields filled with death and ash. Blood ran from his sword and the dead grew in heaps and mounds tall as mountains.
He roared, and a hundred thousand Goblins in his vanguard rose to follow. His armies swept across the land, burning, pillaging. Killing.
No quarter! No mercy! The playthings must die! Kill them. Burn them. All that the Gods have wrought must be destroyed.
His rage was endless. The Goblin King threw himself into battle, killing Humans, Drakes, Gnolls, and every species that got in his way. He only paused when the half-Elven archer raised her bow. The Goblin King’s last thought was regret as the arrow pierced his skull—
Rags sat up and screamed. Her tribe leapt to their feet, shouting as she struggled to sit up in her dirty blankets. Rags looked around wildly, and realized it had been a dream.
No—not a dream. A memory. One of her visions of a time long past, when the most recent Goblin King had lived.
Only a fragment, though. As Rags shouted her Goblins back down and waved her hands, she knew her tribe wasn’t large enough to let her truly focus on those memories. This was more like a…bubble, floating up into her mind.
She still remembered the rage. Endless, consuming rage. Had that been the last King? In Rags’ mind, he was more like an avenging nightmare, driven only by death and slaughter. She couldn’t understand.
But then, the Goblin King had been leader of a tribe that was nearly limitless. He would have been able to look back—perhaps a thousand years! If Rags had a tribe that long, she might understand more of his rage, his past, and most importantly, his death.
Rags had never heard of a Goblin dying of old age. Their kind had lives like matches; they burned out in seconds in the cold winds of this world.
But Rags would be different. She would never die.
The still very young Goblin rubbed at her eyes. She was awake. The memory of dying was too vivid to sleep on. She pulled the blankets up around her shoulders—yanking it from three Goblins who protested until she kicked them—and looked around her new home.
It wasn’t great. But given that the last cave the Goblins had lived in could be accurately described as a waste of space, this was fine.
Rags shuffled her way through sleeping bodies, heedless of what or who she stepped on until she got to the pot that miraculously hadn’t yet been emptied by the coals at one end of the cavern. Rags opened the dented lid, tasted the soup and made a face.
It tasted horrible. But then, most Goblin cooking tasted bad given the things that went in them. Rags wouldn’t have minded normally, but Erin’s cooking had spoiled her.
The Goblin found a bowl, ate the leftovers still stuck to the bottom, and filled it again. She had standing orders that other Goblins weren’t allowed to serve themselves except at meal times, and then only a limited amount. Her warriors are twice what the other Goblins did.
But Rags was a Chief, and what good was being a Chief if you didn’t get special privileges? Other Goblins didn’t really grumble about a Chief using their power; it was unfair, yes, but it was just another thing they would do if they were Chief.
Rags ate the warm soup with her fingers, spooning it efficiently into her mouth as she looked around her cave. She turned, thinking to go back to her bed, and met two purple eyes made of flame.
The Goblin choked on her soup and reached for her sword. She never let her weapons leave her side, even in sleep. But Toren just caught the bowl as it fell, ignoring Rags as the Goblin stumbled back.
The soup bowl was caught, but since it was caught face-down, all the soup dripped between the skeleton’s fingers. He regarded the slimy mixture, and then shook it off his hands.
Rags glared at Toren, ignoring the spilled food. Someone would eat it later. She glared at him in much the same way Erin did, but the skeleton was not impressed.
He was crossing his arms, waiting for something. What? Toren could not speak, so Rags had to guess. Ah. Of course; he wanted her to fulfill the bargain so he could go back. The Goblins had been too exhausted to do anything after making camp, but his patience was clearly at an end.
Yes. The cave. The battle with the enchanted plate armor. Rags closed her eyes as the events of yesterday came flooding back to her.
She remembered. But since it was her memory, it was even more glorious.
—-
The enchanted suit of armor roared in fury, metal screeching as it swung at Toren. The skeleton dodged, and Rags popped up behind the armor and fired another crossbow bolt.
The quarrel punched through the shoulder of the chest plate, but like all of her other arrows it barely phased the magical armor. It turned, and Rags immediately ran. The armor lumbered after her, but Rags had learned [Rapid Retreat] and she outdistanced the swinging sword easily.
Other Goblins shouted, and the suit of armor turned just in time to be struck by a dozen clay pellets. Even together, the impact barely rocked the massive construct. It began to chase the Goblins, but Toren leapt on it from behind, bashing it wildly.
His bones scattered, and Rags saw the team of Goblins arrive at last. They tossed three rolls of the boom bark on the ground and Rags shouted a challenge. She knocked the helmet of the armor off with a quarrel, and he charged her, greatsword raised to end her life. Rags cast [Firefly] directly at the rolls of bark as he ran past—
—-
It had been a battle like those Rags remembered from her furthest Chieftain’s memories. Back when multiple high-level Hobs had challenged deadly monsters and won. In this case, it had been luck, daring, the new crossbows and the boom bark that had won the day.
And only just. Rags remembered how the armor had gotten back up after it had been blasted once, and how they’d had to pelt it with almost all of their ammunition before it stopped moving. But they’d done it. They’d won.
The next Chieftain would be able to see this memory, Rags knew. Whoever followed her would learn much about how to do battle properly. Their skirmish had not cost a single Goblin’s life, or even an undead one. Toren had survived, albeit in pieces, and in the aftermath, Rags had put together several important points.
Firstly, it appeared Toren knew of the ‘place of death’. In fact, he had even fallen into it somehow, finding another entrance to the dungeon. Which led Rags to her second discovery, which was that this place was a dungeon.
Obviously. She wasn’t sure why
no other Goblin had put that together, but then, not many had been witness to the many conversations at Erin’s inn. Sometimes the speakers even forgot Rags was there, and she would learn wonderful secrets.
But more information followed the first. This dungeon was massive. Rags knew this, because Toren had fallen into a rift miles away from where they were. This, Rags had learned due to the most important point:
Toren could understand her.
Yes, she had been stunned to realize the skeleton could understand the Goblin’s chattering language. The dead speak all tongues, and so Toren could understand Rags. And she could understand him because she was a genius.
It was easy. Ask a question, and Toren would gesticulate. Ask more questions to clarify, and he would draw images, or nod or shake his head. It was a basic system of communication, but through it, Rags had realized the skeleton was a lot smarter than he acted. She wondered why no one else had noticed.
Or…perhaps he had become smarter over time. Rags didn’t remember him being quite this knowing before. It made her wary, but the exchange of information had been worth it.
The entrance where so many monsters had come out of over the decades was indeed the entrance to part of the dungeon—the same type of dungeon as the ruins with the undead, although these were even more magical and dangerous, if that was possible.
But there was power down there, and Rags needed power. So she was going to explore the dungeon. With Toren’s help. That was the bargain.
Initially, Toren had been apathetic to the Goblins. He’d wandered off as Rags was marshaling her tribe, only returning when it became apparent that, among the sterling qualities the skeleton might have, a sense of direction was not among them.
Rags had talked, and he’d mainly agreed. Toren had done a rough sketch of the dungeon, indicated what levels had the most danger, and agreed to show her the first few levels he’d run through in exchange for her taking him back to the inn.
It was a good deal, and full of confidence after the battle, Rags’ tribe had marched into the crevasse in the side of the mountain. They’d lost nearly ten Goblins within the hour.