By The Shadower

AN: I wrote this a while ago and am only posting it now. Please review, so I can tell how I did. Reviews might inspire me to write more, such as, for instance, a sequel, or something related to this. Even negative reviews are welcome, so long as they are clear as to why they are negative.

In the end, it’s all just Chess.

This was what Jack thought as he stared at the pieces before him, set on the board in neat and understood patterns. He looked at the board across from him, where no opponent rested. He had no true opponent, none who could truly hope to best him. Yet still he lost, still he lost, because The Enemy was still there.

The Enemy, he thought, was not an opponent. It simply was, in the way that things can just be after an eternity of thought and existence. In the way he was, the way he had always been. There were no beginnings.

He looked at the board before him. His army was at hand, Black, as always. And as always he moved first, even though the Short Ones claimed that the first move would always be in the domain of Light and Goodness and Warmth.

The pawn was heavy in his hand as he set it forward on the board, it made a tiny but huge sound upon landing.

He retracted his hand, having made his move, and looked across the board expectantly.

And the other chair wasn’t empty anymore. Now it shifted with a kind of flickering, as if something was there yet not quite there. The shimmer gathered around one White pawn, and seemed to become almost but not quite corporeal. The pawn lifted and fell two spaces ahead of where it had been.

Jack almost smiled, in that way of almost smiling he had perfected over the years. The game had begun, again, as it had infinite times before.

Jack brushed the brown hair back from his face, the smile gone without a trace, as if it had never been. He moved another piece forward.

And so the game was played, on and on and on, with no sound other than that of the pieces moving. Click, clack.

And so the game was played, for a moment and for eternity, as it had always been, as it always would be. Always in playing or beginning to be played, never ending. There was no end to the game.

End