I began analyzing the board again with frantic precision, my enhanced perception cataloging positions and calculating trajectories with the kind of desperate focus that came from watching someone about to be executed in the most elaborate manner possible.
I found exactly what I knew I’d find buried beneath layers of optimistic denial. Nothing. Not a single move to a safe square anywhere on the board, no clever escape hidden in obscure chess rules, no technicality or loophole that could save the assassin from his predetermined fate.
The game was over before it even began, checkmate written into the starting position with such elegant brutality it became mathematical proof of inevitability.
Priscilla had arranged her pieces with the precision of someone who understood not just chess tactics but the deeper principles underlying strategic domination—how to create positions where struggle itself became meaningless, where every path led to the same conclusion, where hope transformed into just another form of suffering.
I guessed then that all she needed to do now was declare checkmate to end the game, the words alone triggering whatever cosmic mechanism the deity of this realm used to exact punishment upon its losing pieces.
I opened my mouth to observe this aloud, to perhaps warn the assassin that resistance was futile and that he should accept his end with whatever dignity remained available, when every last instinct governing the man’s survival kicked into overdrive with such force it shattered the self-inflicted paralysis holding him frozen.
Fear transmuted into action without conscious thought mediating the transformation, his body moving before his brain could catalog all the reasons this constituted suicide, because standing still guaranteed death while attacking offered the microscopic possibility that maybe—just maybe—violence could punch through whatever supernatural constraints bound him.
With nowhere to reasonably move and no tactical options that didn’t end in capture, he did the only thing remaining to someone with nothing left to lose. He attacked.
His legs coiled beneath him with desperate strength, muscles flooding with whatever enhancements he possessed, his entire frame launching forward in an explosive motion that carried him across the white tile where he’d been trapped toward the black square between himself and Priscilla.
His spear came up in a strike aimed directly at her undefended throat, the blade cutting through the air with lethal intent, his face visible now through the helmet’s narrow slits showing determination mixed with wild desperation.
However, the second his boot touched down on that intervening black square, his entire body froze. Not the instinctual paralysis from before—this was something else entirely, something external and absolute that seized control of his nervous system and simply stopped him mid-motion.
His leg remained extended from his final step, his spear held overhead in an attacking position, his mouth open around words that would never finish forming, every muscle locked in place by a magic that felt fundamentally different from fear or hesitation.
This was petrification in its most literal sense, transformation into a living statue through forces that cared nothing for consent or resistance.
Priscilla giggled with manic delight, her voice bright and cheerful as she addressed the frozen assassin with the kind of patience one might show when explaining obvious things to particularly slow children.
"Oh, you poor, desperate thing. Did you really think attacking me would work? That somehow, through sheer audacity and violence, you could circumvent rules enforced by a deity older than this city, stronger than any mortal magic, indifferent to your suffering in ways that make the void itself seem compassionate by comparison?"
She leaned a fraction closer. "The moment you stepped onto this square between us, the moment you attempted an illegal move within my realm’s geometry, the deity’s regulatory magic seized you completely. You’re not just frozen—you’re claimed, marked as a piece that violated the sacred rules of chess."
She straightened then, clasping her hands behind her back, her voice rising with ceremonial weight. "By the authority vested in me as Queen of the White, master of this realm, champion of the deity that governs victory itself—I declare checkmate. The black king has no legal moves remaining. The game concludes. White achieves inevitable triumph exactly as designed."
The entire space reacted at once. The fractured sky above us pulsed with a light that had no visible source, galaxies spinning faster in their impossible dance, stars flaring with sudden brilliance that painted everything in shades of cosmic indifference.
The checkerboard beneath our feet thrummed with deep magic resonating throughout the transformed rooftop, the black and white tiles glowing with an internal luminescence that made them appear carved from captured light.
The air itself grew thick with potential energy waiting desperately to be harnessed, power coiling through reality like electricity seeking ground, the deity’s presence becoming almost tangible as it prepared to grant its promised reward to the victor.
Priscilla raised her hand toward the fractured sky, her small frame somehow commanding the attention of forces that dwarfed human comprehension, her voice carrying across impossible distances with perfect clarity.
"By rights of victory achieved through perfect play, by demonstration of tactical supremacy acknowledged by the deity itself, I claim my reward! I exact punishment upon the losing party as cosmic law permits! Let the realm respond to my will!"
The realm responded almost instantly.
I stared in mounting horror as the space above the frozen assassin began to fold inward on itself, reality warping and twisting to accommodate something massive forcing its way into existence through tears in the fabric of baseline physics.
A chess piece materialized in the air high overhead—a black king carved from pure obsidian, standing easily three meters tall and proportioned with the same geometric precision as the tiles beneath our feet.
The piece hung suspended for one terrible moment, its weight defying gravity through the deity’s intervention, shadows pooling beneath it like liquid darkness waiting to spill.
The assassin didn’t possess the ability to tilt his head upward, the realm’s regulatory magic maintaining his frozen posture with absolute authority, leaving him unable to see the instrument of his execution descending toward him with mechanical inevitability.
His eyes remained locked forward, wide with a terror that couldn’t find expression through paralyzed facial muscles, his body a prison that wouldn’t even allow him the mercy of screaming.
And then it dropped
The massive chess piece fell with such sudden violence it made the air scream in protest, gravity reasserting itself with interest accumulated during the suspension, the obsidian king plummeting downward with a velocity that physics calculated and approved without caring for the fragile meat waiting below.
BAM!
It struck the frozen assassin with an impact that produced sounds no human body should make—wet crunches mixing with the sharp crack of shattering bone, metal armor crumpling like paper around flesh that compressed, ruptured, and exploded outward under forces exceeding anything biological materials could reasonably withstand.
Blood erupted in all directions from the point of impact, painting the surrounding tiles in abstract patterns that caught the strange light filtering through broken sky.
The obsidian king continued its descent, driving through the pulverized remains of the assassin’s body to embed itself in the checkerboard tile with a sound like thunder contained in too small a space, cracks radiating outward from the impact point in spiderweb patterns that threatened the board’s geometric integrity.
Priscilla stood directly in the spray radius, her face and clothing painted crimson by the explosion of gore, droplets of blood catching in her hair and running down her cheeks in rivulets that should’ve made her look horrifying but instead somehow amplified her childlike features into something more disturbing than simple violence.
She giggled like a maniac, the sound bright and genuine, her entire body shaking with mirth as she spun on her heel with her arms outstretched like a child playing in the rain.
When she completed her rotation to face us she clasped her hands together, her giddy smile sending shivers racing down my spine and settling cold in my core, because the expression carried no malice or cruelty—just pure, innocent joy at having successfully executed a game exactly as designed.
"What," I managed with a shaky breath that barely qualified as speech, "what just happened?" The question directed itself at Lord Erwin because looking at Priscilla felt dangerous in ways I couldn’t quite articulate, like making eye contact with something that wore human shape but operated under principles that defied human comprehension.
Lord Erwin’s voice remained steady despite the carnage spreading across the tiles mere meters from where we sat.
"This is the capability of Priscilla’s fractal realm in its complete manifestation. She’s able to pull enemies and allies alike into a game of human chess where pieces are played by living beings, where the board becomes reality itself, where the rules enforced by the governing deity supersede all other magical laws."
He paused to take another sip of tea, the gesture surreal against the backdrop of violence. "From the moment the realm activates, the game commences with lives on the line—both hers and her pieces face genuine death should she make tactical errors leading to defeat. The deity is impartial to the master who summons their realm. Victory is all it cares about, the only principle it values, the single rule it enforces with absolute authority. Whoever achieves victory gains temporary access to harness its full power in the form of exacting punishment upon the losers."
"What does that imply?" I asked, my voice climbing higher than intended. "What kind of punishment are we talking about?"
Lord Erwin gestured toward the crushed remains of the assassin with one elegant hand. "The realm operates in an absurd manner that defies logical constraints. Nearly anything that comes to imagination when considering the conceptual nature of chess, victory, defeat, and the deity governing those principles can be utilized as punishment."
His expression remained neutral as he cataloged examples with clinical detachment. "I’ve witnessed losing pieces fall through their squares into never-ending black abysses where they descend forever. I’ve seen people transformed into chess pieces—carved from stone, wood, or flesh depending on the victor’s whim—retaining awareness trapped in their immobile forms. Knights have been bound to endless repetition of the same L-shaped movement pattern, forced to hop eternally across boards that stretch to infinity. Bishops condemned to walk only diagonal paths through reality itself, unable to deviate even as those paths lead through walls, through other people, through space that shouldn’t exist."
I shuddered violently, my entire body convulsing with revulsion as the implications of that cascaded through my consciousness like falling dominoes made of concentrated nightmare fuel.
I stared at the girl standing before us with blood painting her face into a mask of crimson innocence, seeing her through new eyes that recognized exactly how dangerous she was beneath the giggling exterior, understanding with terrible clarity why Lord Erwin kept her close and why the Ivory Gambit commanded such respect.
Priscilla wasn’t just powerful—she was the kind of weapon that ended wars through reputation alone, the sort of force that made conventional combat meaningless because she turned violence itself into a game with rules only she understood and outcomes she predetermined before the first move ever occurred.
And gods above, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t terrified.