Queen's Gambit

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EnigmaticSpirit
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Queen's Gambit

Post by EnigmaticSpirit » Sat Oct 13, 2018 7:42 pm

“Would thou defend this world, Skylar Alaoui?”

I was floating. I felt no pain, no passage of time. I was without body. I had the vaguest sense of attachment, of things not done, tasks I hadn’t completed. But I felt loss. So much had happened that day. My life was upside down; my closest confidante, embracing one of the Red Knight’s most hated enemies, one of my comrades in enemy hands, and the brand that had stained the last year of my life, gone.

I was free. But I didn’t feel free. I had goals. Obligations…

“Would thou defend this world, Skylar Alaoui?”


“Why me?” I tried to answer. I heard my voice resound in the formless space. There was no colour, no walls to echo the sound, but my voice came back at me regardless. My life was empty. I felt no attachment to kith or kin. So much pain, so much loss.

But I’d done a good thing. I was content in that. My last act had been a selfless one, and everything I believed in.

“Because you did, Skylar Alaoui.”


A face looked out of the formless space, the void without colour parting and the head emerging from the gap. A figure climbed out as if emerging from water, the space around it rippling and my immediate surroundings lighting up. Colour radiated from it, vibrant reds, golds, blues, touching every space around me. Except myself.

“This isn’t who I was meant to be,” I answered. “Who I am… I never got to be that person.”

“You wish it?”
The voice answered. No longer formless, androgynous. Female. My own tongue, my own accent. But the figure’s lips did not move and aside from a vaguely feminine shape in armour, I couldn’t tell who it was.

“Who are you?” I asked of it, firmly, digging into myself. I found a hilt in my hands and I pointed it towards the figure, both weapon and defence.

The figure mirrored my movement. The shape of our blades was identical, the colours of the surroundings swimming around us, chaotic and surreal, reflecting from the metal of mine; but the other blade my counterpart held was white, glowing. Warm.

I’d always liked the warm.

“Who do you think I am, Skylar Alaoui?”


I feel, I seemed to remember myself once telling him. I’d loved him so dearly. I missed the warmth I’d shared with him. Even now I could feel his skin in my free left hand.
I looked to my right hand. It took form now around the hilt of the sword and I could perceive it. There was no wicked black Mark of Justice. Instead, there was a red… tattoo?

A Red Knight. It had a faint white glow to it. Also warm.

“I know you,” I answered, lowering my blade. I could feel armour on myself now. Gold and blue, and a flowing red cloak behind me. “I know who you are.”

“Is it who you wish to be?”
The figure answered, calmly. I knew the voice now – it was mine.

“Yes,” I answered. “Dearly. I would defend this world… Skylar Alaoui.”

“Do you understand what you are asking?”


I laughed. The blades disappeared from our hands and we were embracing now. Twins. The other figure was me. The space, and the warmth of the other figure faded, gradually. I could just make out voices in the distance. I was being beckoned to. I could feel hands shaking me, slapping my back. I felt water, all over me. Wood beneath me. The pirates must have cast me into the sea when all was said and done. That meant Gristle hadn’t gotten hungry. Gods be praised.

“Red Knight,” I said aloud. “I will defend this world. Whatever that means. I don’t understand how, or why you would choose me. But I’m ready to find out.”

I paused, looking around. I spared a thought for those few I thought might support me. Maybe I could give Rann and Emelina the courage they deserved. Maybe Eirik and Faegwynn had survived. Perhaps there was still hope for Mach. Maybe I could be a good colleague to Sabni, and everything he hoped I could become. But the pirates, the Andunorians, and the many local hazards of the isle needed me to fight. Not just me. All of us. They would need strategy. They would need my scimitar.

“Lass,” a male voice cried urgently. “Come on, lass, wake up… yer alive.”

I opened my eyes. I had a blade tied to my hip and the sodden clothes about my person, nothing more. But I was alive. And I felt different. Warmth.

“Pawn to C4,” I rasped. I felt whole, though, even as I gasped for breath. “Queen’s gambit.”


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