ALL WAS SILENT in the throne room of Aotoshi’s palace. Given it was a Sunday morning, the string quartet was allowed the day off. Kunshu sat alone in his throne, resting his back on one of the throne’s arms with his legs dangling off of the other. Suddenly, a knock came from the door.

  “Shirei!” Kunshu yelled out. “I told you not to interrupt me!” The door opened slowly before Kunshu could even leave his throne. When Kunshu noticed this, he bolted up from his position and reached for the Alpha Blade.

  “Wait!” Kadaina exclaimed before the Emperor of Aotoshi could kill him. “I’m not here for blood. I only wish to exchange words.”

  “You want to talk?” Kunshu asked in a low voice. “You’re that Meiji kid. The one that was appointed to co-general of the Aotoshi’s 154th regiment. One of General Imoru’s closest confidants. Why should I believe that you only want to talk?”

  “I’d never been much of a good fighter,” the mage replied. “On the contrary, I sometimes find fighting to be meaningless.”

  “Sure,” the emperor scoffed.

  “In fact,” Kadaina carried on, “I believe that there’s a diplomatic way to handle this whole situation between Aotoshi and Akuni.”

  Kunshu paused for a moment.

  “Are you unarmed, boy?” he barked.

  “I carry no weapons,” the boy answered calmly. “If you doubt me, I can empty my pockets for you.”

  “If you would be so kind,” Kunshu requested.

  Sure enough, Kadaina outturned his pockets, revealing that, other than his billfold, he had nothing in his pockets.

  “Well,” Kunshu began, “I haven’t played a decent game of chess in a while. Would you be interested in humoring me with a round?”

  “By all means,” the mage replied, his eyes widening slightly.

  “Very well,” the wielder of the Alpha Blade continued. “Just know that I will not hesitate to decapitate you at any sign of foul play.”

  “Understood,” Kadaina responded, internally wary of Kunshu potentially being a sore loser.

  Regardless, both Kunshu and Kadaina moved toward the chess board. Kadaina went to the side with the white pieces, but Kunshu lifted his arm and blocked Kadaina’s path. The emperor then gestured to the side with the black pieces. Kadaina understood very well what was happening with this maneuver. Kunshu, being the emperor and a fearsome combatant, could strike him down if he so wished. Knowing this, Kunshu was able to leverage anything to his advantage that would not be classified as cheating. In this case, Emperor Mujihina guaranteed the best possible advantage before even sitting down: the first move.

  Once both players were ready, Kunshu made the first move, sending the king’s pawn forward to e4. Of course, somebody so dead set on victory would also go for the most reliable opening move. Several different positions could be taken from here to either keep the game in a tight balance or potentially win it over for the black side if white makes too many blunders. In particular, Kadaina was fond of moving his queen’s pawn up one space, initiating the Pirc Defense.

  A flurry of moves soon followed, starting with Kunshu moving his queen side pawn two spaces, while Kadaina moved his left hand knight inward. Kunshu defended his e-rank pawn by moving his knight to c3. Kadaina moved his g-rank pawn up one step. Already within the first three moves on each side, the two had started to analyze one-another. Kunshu moved his bishop to c4, while Kadaina completed a fianchetto at g7.

  “Impressive,” Kunshu remarked as he looked at the board, activating his right-hand knight by moving it up two spaces and inward one. “I was tempted to choose a much worse opening, but luckily I knew better than to let my guard down.”

  “Don’t tell me you were going to try for the Sodium Attack,” Kadaina teased as he moved his own knight to c6.

  “I was more thinking of the Reti,” Kunshu teased back before castling. A somewhat annoyed expression grew on Kadaina’s face as the mage castled as well.

  “I jest, of course,” the emperor continued, moving the d-rank pawn up. “It may not be as reliable as the King’s Pawn, but I can acknowledge its appeal.”

  “Personally,” Kadaina began as he moved his right-hand knight toward the outside of the board, attacking Kunshu’s bishop, “I like how it catches over-eager players off-guard. It stunts the e-pawn’s progress greatly under threat of capture. Even if they move it there and you don’t take the hanging piece, it can easily transpose into a very sharp opening.”

  “You know a lot for someone your age,” Kunshu noted as he nudged his bishop horizontally to the knight. “Who taught you to play like this?”

  “Kashikoi Masuta,” Kadaina answered dryly before moving a pawn. “He was a very important man to me.”

  “Is that so?” Kashikoi’s murderer remarked as he used his pawn to capture the newly-moved black pawn. “Well then, I am truly sorry about the passing of your teacher.”

  “How so?” This was accentuated by Kadaina taking the pawn back from Kunshu by moving his b-pawn to the square almost immediately.

  Kunshu quietly moved his bishop back after a few seconds, all the while glaring at Kadaina. The mage responded by moving his bishop and pinning Kunshu’s knight to his queen.

  “I’ve had plenty of practice with this game,” Akuni’s co-commander continued. “Even though my life is still young, some have said I’m on par with some very high-rank players.”

  “Is that what you believe?” Kunshu pondered, pushing a pawn forward to kick the bishop.

  “Does the name Ishmael Russel ring a bell to you?” Kadaina captured the knight, letting his bishop get captured in return.

  “Don’t tell me you’re on par with Grandmaster Russel,” the emperor scoffed as he took back with the queen.

  “We went head to head once,” the diplomat told Kunshu as he moved a rook to the open b-rank. “I managed to force a draw from him.”

  “Very impressive,” Kunshu remarked, moving his own rook to be parallel with Kadaina’s once more, “but that’s not what I meant. I meant to ask you something else. Do you think your life is young?”

  “Well, chronologically speaking, yes,” Kadaina answered with a pawn moving to c5. “I am only sixteen, after all.”

  “I disagree with that notion,” his opponent began, moving his knight to d5, in range of Kadaina’s knight. “My belief is that life is cyclical.”

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “Cyclical?” Kadaina inquired. The two continued to move their pieces as they spoke, making a surprising amount of strong moves at an unusually quick pace.

  “I believe that once you die,” the emperor began, “you return to the moment you were born. You relive your entire life, finding your mistakes once again, and trying to mend them.”

  “Are you suggesting that we’re trapped in a temporal loop?” the mage asked. “Are we stuck in an eighty-year-long stretch of time for eternity until we fix ourselves?”

  “Perhaps,” Kunshu continued. “Who really knows? In fact, it’s possible that, whenever you have a moment, you can see something that happened in a past iteration. Let’s say, for instance, you decided to join the military and met your doom that way. You might recall signing up for the military, feeling like you had already been recruited before.”

  “You mean like deja vu?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Huh,” Kadaina began as he captured a pawn on g3 with his queen. “Check you out, thinking you have everything figured out.”

  Kunshu looked at the board and realized that there was a message in what Kadaina said. He was in check. He made the king retreat to his right.

  “I have a few different ideas myself,” the mage continued, capturing another pawn and giving a slight threat to Kunshu’s queen. “I agree that glances into the future are possible. After all, I’ve been a bit of a determinist myself.”

  “Absolutely,” Kunshu added, moving his rook to threaten Kadaina’s queen in turn. “To ignore the hand of fate is to be blind to what will inevitably strike you down.”

  “That being said,” Kadaina continued, advancing his queen to f2, planting it firmly in Kunshu’s territory, “I don’t think we live the same life over and over again when we die. I think that our spirits roam the land, externally trapped, and unable to perceive time. After all, time is something that humans weigh themselves down with. The timeless, like the spirits, would not age a day.”

  The flurry of moves kicked back up once more.

  “But what about the afterlife then?” Kunshu refuted. “Spirits suggest a limbo of some sort.”

  “Maybe, for those who are virtuous enough, they may be granted a sort of ‘heaven’. Those less virtuous, on the other hand, the tyrants, the murderers, and such, will have to either change their ways or risk damnation, be that in being trapped in some sort of limbo or through a more conventional ‘hell’.”

  Kadaina moved another pawn to the backmost row and promoted it to a queen.

  “Ten,” the mage announced.

  “What was that about?” Kunshu asked as he moved his king. By this point, the board was rather clear, with only one pawn on Kunshu’s side and Kadaina having four pawns and a queen, not including either king.

  “Nine,” Kadaina continued as he maneuvered the newly made queen.

  At that moment, Kunshu realized what had happened. He had realized that he was in a position where he was guaranteed to lose. Once the last blitz of moves was over, however, the mage was proven incorrect. Kunshu ended up losing the match three turns earlier than Kadaina had predicted.

  Kunshu looked at the board, perplexed that he had just lost. This was his first defeat in chess in what felt like a century. Every single measly opponent before this that he had faced caused him to grow disinterested in the game, but now he found his enjoyment sparked once again. Kunshu reached out his hand to Kadaina, one of the only people to beat him in recent years.

  “Let’s cut to the chase,” Kadaina suggested as he began to reset the board. “We can play chess all day like old pals in the park and discuss what we think will happen when we die, but that’s not going to get us anywhere. We both want this war to end, do we not?”

  “Not exactly,” Kunshu clarified. “I don’t want the war to just be over. I want the war to be won by Aotoshi. More specifically, I want to keep the Kenshi boy in my line of sight.”

  “You care that much about one measly soldier?” the Akuni commander asked. “You might need to rethink your priorities.”

  “You don’t understand, do you?” the emperor snarled. “I’m not after Yukan. I’m after his weapon. Once I have the Omega Blade, I’ll be unstoppable. There’s nothing in Crenon that could stop me. I’d be nigh immortal!”

  “That’s a shame,” Kadaina sighed as he got up from the chess table. “You’ll never reach immortality, I’m afraid. If you can be killed now, then that’s all I need.”

  Just then, Kadaina clapped four times and the room was flooded with Akuni troops. Seventy five men revealed their positions to Kunshu in the span of ten seconds. One of the troops threw Brildingjr to Kadaina. Kunshu reached for the Alpha Blade, something that did not go unnoticed by Kadaina.

  “Topiam suorfis mutis!” he yelled as a large blast of energy emerged from the staff. The troops, just outside of the blast radius, continuously fired their guns at where Suorfis had planted itself, with Kunshu being presumed in the center.

  Eventually, the attack died down. Although there were no bullet wounds in Kunshu, his skin had been burnt somewhat in the blast.

  “You dishonorable son of a bitch!” Kunshu yelled.

  “This is the end of your reign, Mujihina,” the attacker proclaimed. “People’s lives are not pawns. This game has been going on for far too long.”

  “So it has,” the emperor growled as he brandished the Alpha Blade.

  Kunshu then leapt toward Kadaina, preparing to strike down the commander.

  ??????????????

  That Sunday afternoon was cloudy. Akuni’s troops had found themselves camped about a hundred miles from Antemouth, anxiously awaiting the return of Kadaina’s squadron. Yukan and Ite sat at one of the tables outside of the tents. Ite was carefully replacing the feathers on her arrows while Yukan was fiddling with a white bishop, Kadaina’s initials sloppily engraved on the bottom of the piece. Yukan’s leg was bobbing up and down as he waited.

  “Are you holding up alright, Yu?” Ite asked.

  “Yeah, sure,” Yukan replied.

  “It sure doesn’t seem like it,” the archer prodded. “Does this have to do with-”

  “With Kunshu being my uncle?” the swordsman interjected. “Yes. It has a lot to do with that.”

  “You shouldn’t let yourself be defined by him, you know.”

  “It’s not that. It has more to do with what that means for everybody else.”

  Yukan sighed before continuing.

  “If I die, we can’t make any guarantee that Kunshu can’t get ahold of the Omega Blade. And we all know what’s going to happen next if he does.”

  “Right,” Ite said. “But wouldn’t that mean you could also get the Alpha Blade if he dies?”

  “What does it matter?” Yukan scoffed. “I don’t care for the Alpha Blade. Hell, I didn’t even care for the Omega Blade. I-”

  The sound of a buggy could be heard. Yukan stopped talking and looked over at the source of the sound as the buggy pulled up to the camp. Out from the buggy emerged a single Akuni troop. The rest of the Akuni camp soon arrived to meet him. After a short while, the troop finally spoke.

  “We… we were…” he stammered.

  Zenpan approached the troop.

  “Spit it out!” the general demanded.

  “We were wiped out!” the troop reported to the commander. “All but myself. If it hadn’t been for Kadaina, I would be a dead man.”

  “What?!” Zenpan yelled out. He looked around for a moment as his expression changed. “Where is he? Where’s Kadaina?! What happened to him?!”

  The troop’s expression soured. He went to the back of the buggy and retrieved a body bag from the wagon.

  “He was killed by Kunshu,” the troop answered. “They all were. He used his last breath to tell us to fall back. I was lucky enough to sneak away with his body.”

  Zenpan wore a worried look on his face before opening the body bag. Sure enough, the troop was proven correct. Yukan pushed through the crowd in an attempt to see Kadaina’s body. Ite followed shortly after.

  Once he finally saw it, he stood for a moment in stunned silence. Finally, he dropped to his knees. Ite’s face wretched.

  “Dammit…” Ite choked out beneath the tears as she fought them back.